


Constancy

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Psycho-Pass, Soul Eater
Genre: Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Eventual Fluff, Injury, Insanity, M/M, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It happens instantaneously." Stein has been an Enforcer since he was old enough to be allowed to join the force. He's not expecting anything in his life to change, including his Psycho-Pass. Then it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Upheaval

It happens instantaneously.

Stein’s not paying much attention to the newcomer -- one detective isn’t much different from another as far as he is concerned. When the new recruit comes in the Enforcer is leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling and idly picking at the raised scar that winds across the back of his hand, relic of yet another dangerous decision in the heat of battle. He has a whole collection of them, faint pale line tracing over his chest and arms and one, his favorite, curving right across his face. The detectives don’t like them -- they get uncomfortable at the visual representation of how different Stein is from them -- and even the other Enforcers tend to look away, most of them just as edgy about his casual acceptance of his situation as the detectives they try to emulate.

It’s not Stein’s habit, to pretend to be something he’s not. It’s not like he has any hope of changing his situation, and it’s not like he’s particularly sensitive to the isolation his appearance causes. He just doesn’t  _care_ , about the disdain or the fear or his Hue, even, doesn’t care about much of anything beyond the all-too occasional heat of blood splashed over his skin.

“Mm,” Medusa purrs from her corner. Stein can see the blond getting to her feet as the new inspector is led into the room, can hear the sharp threat of her smile in her voice. “Fresh meat.”

“Stop it,” Inspector Barett orders, calm with repetition. “I will revoke your Enforcer position if that becomes necessary.”

“And that’s why I love you,” Medusa purrs, but she does straighten to stand instead of lounge. “Who is the newbie, though?”

“Inspector Albarn.” Sid is clearly speaking to the newcomer rather than to Medusa; his voice has taken on the professional resonance it always lacks with the Enforcers. “Enforcer Gorgon is the rude one, there in the corner. Usually we have two more, but they’re off the clock right now. You’ll meet them later today.” A hand comes down on Stein’s shoulder. The Enforcer straightens from his lean, starts to spin around. “This is Enforcer Stein.”

It’s not that the new Inspector is all that remarkable, except maybe for the stunning red of his hair. He’s attractive, sure, in a sort of standard way, and he has a nice smile, and he looks like this job is going to chew him up and spit him out. None of that, not even the heartblood color of his hair, is what brings Stein’s feet slamming flat to the floor, though. It’s the flush of heat under his skin, the thud of his heart in his chest, the way his vision clears when he blinks, and he  _knows_ , even while the new Inspector is offering a hand to shake and Medusa is still huffing at Sid from the corner, he can  _feel_  the change like a physical shift.

“Good to meet you,” the redhead is saying, smiling like Stein’s not some half-rabid dog to be kept on a chokechain but instead another human being, and Stein, who has never cried before in all his life, can feel heat burning over his eyes when he blinks. “Stein, right?”

Stein doesn’t answer, but after a moment that is slightly too long he takes the Inspector’s hand, too fast and too hard, and then lets go too soon so the other man blinks blue eyes at him and laughs more out of awkward self-consciousness than actual amusement.

“Don’t mind him,” Inspector Barett is saying, steering the redhead in towards one of the unoccupied desks while Stein pivots himself back around to hunch over his desk. “Stein’s always like that. He’s a good Enforcer, though, totally unflappable. His Crime Coefficient hasn’t shifted by so much as a point since he started working for us five years ago.”

“That just makes him more of a freak,”Medusa points out helpfully. “Even our Hues  _should_  shift a little, given what we do on a daily basis.”

“Well.” Sid waves a hand, Stein doesn’t have to turn to see it. “Makes him a good Enforcer, anyway. Now you.” He’s back to the new Inspector again; Stein can hear the sound of the Dominator clicking itself open at the touch. “You’ve held one of these before, right?”

“Just held.” The nerves are audible in the other man’s voice. Stein is picking at his scars again, tracing over the lines over his face without realizing what he’s doing. “Never fired.”

“We’ll save that for tomorrow,” Sid says, and the redhead laughs like the other Inspector is joking. He really  _is_  going to get wrecked by this job. “Point it at me.”

“It won’t let me fire, right?” There’s a pause, the sound of the gun folding itself back into place. “Ah.”

“Exactly. Now try one of the Enforcers. Keep your finger off the trigger, though.”

There’s a pause. Stein plants his foot on the floor, kicks so he spins back around to face the two Inspectors while the redhead is still looking tormented by the decision.

“Me,” he says, raising one hand like he’s bored, like he’s not burning with curiosity and impending confirmation of what he knows absolutely is true. “Aim it at me.”

The redhead makes a face that says protest, but the Dominator is coming up anyway, like he’s obeying Stein’s command without thinking. Usually Stein stares down the Dominator itself, like he’s daring it to fire on him, but it’s a day of firsts, after all. He watches the Inspector’s eyes instead, watches them flash into paler blue while the gun speaks to him.

Stein can’t hear the voice, of course. Sid’s talking again, already giving further information, and Medusa has turned back to whatever she’s playing with today. And the new Inspector doesn’t realize the relevance of what he’s seeing in the ‘168’ Stein can make out mirrored in the ghostly electronic blue haze over his eyes. But a chill runs down the Enforcer’s spine, a shiver of premonition and vindication of his initial shock.

Ever since the first time he was measured, when he was eight years old, his Coefficient has been 170.


	2. Unprecedented

It’s one thing to understand conceptually what the Dominators can do. Even holding the weaponized scanner makes a chill of adrenaline sweep through Spirit’s blood, makes him shake until it takes a conscious effort to steady the weight of the gun so it doesn’t tremble on his target. But he’s not the one who pulls the trigger, at least not this time, and when the target  _explodes_  onto the silver-haired Enforcer Spirit feels a violent wave of relief that it wasn’t him getting showered in blood. Then he feels a violent wave of nausea, has to shut his eyes and breathe through his mouth until the reflexive horror has faded a bit.

“Inspector.” The Enforcer’s voice is perfectly steady in spite of the shower of blood he just took to his face. Spirit swallows hard and looks up; the other man is watching him levelly through the mask of red staining his hair and skin. It’s so red that it looks almost like paint; the mental shift to thinking of it that way helps, even if the heat and smell of blood is too heavy in the air for Spirit to entirely fool himself. “Are you well?”

Spirit nods jerkily, aware even as he does so that the awkward motion isn’t proving his point, and forces himself to his feet. He’s starting to shake with fading adrenaline as the necessity of calm evaporates. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He blinks, forces himself to really  _look_  at the other man past the gore coating his skin. “Are...are you okay?”

The Enforcer -- Stein -- grins suddenly. His teeth are very white against the dark liquid splashing his skin; Spirit doesn’t know how he can possibly smile in the moment, but he looks unruffled by the situation. It’s strangely comforting, at least for the moment before the rest of the team rounds the corner at a run.

“Ah.” Inspector Barett lowers his Dominator as he takes in the scene. “You caught her, then.”

“Yeah,” Stein says, and Spirit is expecting him to say more, but there’s a hiss of shock loud enough that it cuts over the conversation and brings everyone’s attention around to the Enforcer down at the end of the line, the one with a whole array of piercings in his ears and over the bridge of his nose.

“What the  _fuck_?” He’s grating out the words at Stein, though Spirit’s not sure what exactly he’s so upset about. There’s no one around but the Enforcers and the Inspectors, but he’s got his Dominator raised and trained on Stein’s face with shaking arms.

The blond enforcer next to him, the one who looks like he’s barely out of high school, is staring at the other’s face and looks like he’s about to bring up his own weapon on the other Enforcer. “What are you freaking out about, Giriko?”

“ _Look_.” The panicking Enforcer reaches out to grab the end of the blond’s Dominator and lift it towards Stein. The blood-splattered Enforcer is watching him, his mouth still twisted into a smirk that is getting sharper-edged through the conversation unfolding, although he’s not saying anything. “Fucking  _look_  instead of  _talking_.”

The blond doesn’t look away from the other Enforcer, but he lifts his weapon in spite of the skepticism over his features. There’s a pause while the gun clicks itself into Paralyzer mode; then the blond is turning towards Stein, reaching up to steady his weapon with both hands and dropping to a knee for more stability. “What the  _hell_  did you  _do,_  Stein?”

Everyone’s lifting their Dominators now. Spirit doesn’t understand; he had his own weapon trained on Stein and the target a moment ago, and there was nothing particularly horrifying, but now every single Enforcer on the team is staring at the other man like he’s turned into something truly terrifying. Spirit’s never seen any of them look like that about  _anything_.

“Calm down.” That’s Sid, his voice steady and aiming for soothing. “Generally this is a  _good_  sign.”

“Not when it’s never so much as  _flickered_  before,” the pierced Enforcer growls. “No  _way_ , this is  _not_  good news, not with this freak.”

“You’re one to talk.” That’s the blond, snapping even though he’s not looking away from Stein’s unmoving form. “You’re hovering right on the edge of Eliminator all the time, Giriko, this is better than the alternative.”

“Yeah, you’re not putting your Dominator down either,  _princess_.”

“Shut  _up_.” Sid’s voice cuts through the conversation and both Enforcers go silent. “Stein. Come over here slowly.”

Spirit is frozen in place, not sure if he should look at Sid or Stein or the Enforcers now presenting a silent array of weaponry at the blood-soaked man standing from them. Then there’s a sound, and his attention is pulled inextricably over to the Enforcer who is starting to laugh, a crackling sound that grates over his throat like he’s not laughed in years.

“Sure,” Stein says, and he starts to come forward.

There’s a moment of perfect silence but for the sound of the other man’s footsteps and the raw sound of his laughter, the tension wound too tight for more than a few seconds of precarious stability. Spirit can’t stand to watch the white-lipped panic rising in the blond Enforcer’s face, or the murderous fright in the other’s, or the deliberate calm in Sid’s, so he looks out, to where Stein is coming towards them.

The Enforcer isn’t looking at the Dominators. He’s looking at Spirit, eyes fixed on the Inspector’s gaze like that’s what’s drawing him closer, and even if his laugh sounds manic his eyes look calm, steady and sane as Spirit hasn’t seen them before. He stops laughing after a moment, visibly reining himself back to calm until even his vicious grin has faded.

“Fuck this,” the aggressive Enforcer says in Spirit’s periphery. “I ain’t waiting.”

Sid starts to speak, something that sounds like a negative before it turns into a shout of protest. The Dominator crackles with electricity, collects force into a bolt, and Stein looks straight at Spirit and smiles.

The softness of the expression is still on his features when the Paralyzer shot hits him and he crumples to the floor.


	3. Contagious

The first thing Stein hears when he comes to is someone else’s breathing.

That’s unusual. Usually when he wakes up in the hospital the buzzing in his ears in dominant, the mild tinnitus of being paralyzed that takes a while to wear off combined with the constant static of his life. But there’s no static at all, this time, and the absence would be ringing in the silence were it not for the steady sound of a sleeping visitor.

Given that, Stein isn’t surprised to open his eyes and find Inspector Albarn asleep in the uncomfortable chair alongside his bed. The other man’s head is tipped back at a sharp angle so the back of the chair is supporting him, far enough that his neck is drawn out in a pale curve that draws Stein’s eyes even more than the curl of his hair against his shirt. His jacket is off, cast aside over the table next to him along with his tie, and the pale green of his shirt is rumpled like he hasn’t left in a day. He probably hasn’t, though Stein can’t imagine why he would feel the need to lurk over an unconscious Enforcer.

“You didn’t have to stay,” he says aloud, deliberately pitching his voice louder than usual so it reaches through the other’s unconsciousness.

The redhead jerks awake, ungraceful as everyone is in the first breath after waking. His eyes are wide and blue as the sky; in the moment before he remembers who he is they are clear, unobstructed by guilt or responsibility or knowledge, bright as Stein is absolutely certain his own have never been.

“Oh.” He blinks at Stein and the shadow of memory settles back over his features even before he rubs a hand vigorously over his face. “You’re awake.”

“I am,” Stein agrees. His mouth twitches, a pull of a smile too instinctive for him to catch before it hits his lips. “You’re an astute observer, I see.”

Spirit looks up. His smile comes more easily than Stein’s, wide and bright with the unthinking ease of someone who has never even considered repressing his emotions. “You’re teasing me.”

Stein is smiling again, without forcing it, without considering, without thinking about it at all. “I am, yes.”

“And after I stayed by your side for almost a whole day,” Spirit bemoans. He shoves at Stein’s arm, gentle even in his teasing aggression. Stein can’t move his arms on his own yet, but he can feel the shiver of response that ripples under his skin, the heat that rises instantly to meet the casual contact, and his smile fades as fast and instinctively as it came.

“You didn’t have to,” he repeats. He looks back to the other man’s face, watches the playful smile melt away like the Enforcer’s expression is as contagious as his Hue. “This is not the first time this has happened.”

“It was wrong of him to do that,” Spirit says quietly. It’s not an argument, just a statement, so Stein doesn’t try to argue. He looks away, although those blue eyes are still fixed on his face with more insight under them than the Sibyl System has ever offered, focuses his gaze on the inoffensive beige of the ceiling so he doesn’t have to deal with more than the sound of the Inspector’s voice.

“Giriko has a tendency to do things that Inspectors dislike,” he hears himself saying, voice perfectly steady, as if it’s someone else speaking at a distance. “You shouldn’t worry about him. His Hue is particularly infectious.”

“You say that like it only works in one direction.” The Inspector sounds faintly amused, gently teasing in spite of the distance in Stein’s words. “Shouldn’t Inspectors be able to help Enforcers stabilize too?”

“Not Giriko.” Stein’s voice is harsher than he intends it to be. He doesn’t look at the redhead. “It’s been tried with exceedingly poor results.”

There is a pause, a breath of silence while Stein’s declaration hangs in the air. He blinks at the ceiling, takes a breath, and his heartrate is just slowing when the Inspector says, “And what about you?”

He should have seen that coming.

Stein takes a breath, forces a protective smirk that doesn’t touch his eyes, and tips his head to look back at the other. Spirit is still staring at him, leaning slightly forward like proximity will somehow give him insight into the other’s thoughts.

“I’m past help,” Stein declares, letting his words twist into amusement. It’s not like he has any sort of emotional response to being a latent criminal, not when he’s never been anything else. “My Psycho-Pass hadn’t changed in twenty years.”

Spirit blinks. “Twenty years?”

“Yep.” Stein’s smile gets sharper. “Probably before then, but that was when they first got around to scanning me.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight.” Stein isn’t blinking but Spirit isn’t either. He can feel his breathing falling into rhythm with the redhead’s. “They brought me out to be an Enforcer when I was seventeen. Nothing changed it.” If he could move his hands he would tick off the list on his fingers, but as it is he just drops into the lecturing tone he always takes when he tells this story to a curious new Inspector. “Therapy, injury, violence, affection, study, murder -- my Pass never shifted by as much as a point.”

Stein is half-hoping that the Inspector will leave the next piece unstated, but he doesn’t have much hope for it, not with the unblinking intensity the other is fixing him with. So it’s no surprise when the redhead says, “Until yesterday.”

“Mm.” Stein looks away again, feels his breathing drop back into his natural rhythm instead of a borrowed one. “Three days ago, actually.”

“What?”

“When you showed up.” Stein blinks at the ceiling, feels the cool calm of inevitability sweep over him. “You scanned me. I was at 168, right?”

“I don’t --”

“I was,” Stein cuts him off. “I’ve been at 170 my entire life. I don’t know exactly what it dropped down to yesterday, but that change would have been enough to terrify Giriko. It wasn’t just him, either, Justin was just as panicked. It’s not their fault.”

“But.” Spirit sounds distant, monotone with confusion. “But why?”

“I don’t know,” Stein evades. “Apparently you have a positive effect on me.”

There is a pause. Stein collects the words in his thoughts and on his tongue, preparing himself so when Spirit says, “That’s  _good_ , then, that’s exactly what I --”

“No.” Sharp, cold, carefully calculated to slice straight through the redhead’s composure and render him momentarily speechless. “No, you don’t want this. I’m fine. You should be focused on keeping your own Hue healthy rather than taking on a futile case.”

“But --”

“Go away.” Stein tips his head, stares down the redhead with all the blankness he can manage in his expression. “You should leave.”

Spirit blinks at him. The blue of his eyes shadows, goes dark with hurt; it’s like Stein can see the few points of temporary increase in his Psycho-Pass written all over his face. He gets to his feet, and picks up his jacket and tie, and when the door shut behind him Stein breathes a sigh of relief, and shuts his eyes, and waits for his own Hue to rise back to its normal level.


	4. Curosity

Work is getting easier. Spirit’s becoming used to the blood just from exposure, and it’s not so bad on a day-to-day basis; usually they’re using the Paralyzer setting, after all, and the work is becoming routine. The nightmares stop after the first week, his Hue steadies out to its usual range after a few days of upheaval due to the increased stress of changing jobs, and things are starting to seem...normal, if not comfortable yet.

Which means he can take on his next self-defined project.

Stein doesn’t look up from his computer screen when Spirit drops into the chair next to him. He doesn’t so much as glance at the Inspector, in fact, and the movement of his fingers over the keyboard doesn’t stutter even when he says, “Go away, Albarn.”

“Nope,” Spirit says with more than enough cheer in his tone to compensate for the monotone irritation in the other’s voice. “I’m off duty and you should keep me company.”

“ _I_ might not be off duty,” Stein says, still without looking away.

“You are,” Spirit declares. “I checked. There’s not even anyone else here right now, is whatever you’re doing that important?”

Stein doesn’t look away, but if his attention is fixed on his screen Spirit’s is fixed on the Enforcer, and he sees the tiny twitch of amusement at the corner of his mouth in the breath before the other man’s expression is controlled again. “It doesn’t matter, you know. You could order me to come with you if you really wanted.”

“I don’t want to order you,” Spirit admits. “I want you to spend time with me voluntarily.”

Green eyes cut sideways at him as the Enforcer finally looks at him. “And hounding me is likely to get voluntary agreement, do you think?”

“Well.” Spirit looks down, kicks idly at the base of the Enforcer’s chair. “I don’t have a better idea right now.”

That  _is_  a smile, now, visible and lingering, and the Enforcer’s hands are leaving the keyboard so he can lean one elbow on the desk and twist so he’s facing the Inspector more directly. “You lack subtlety.”

“So do you,” Spirit shoots back. “I’m just removing the excuse of misunderstanding.”

The Enforcer’s eyebrows go up and he pivots in his chair entirely, leaning back so he can stare at Spirit straight-on. The grey of his sweater makes him look like a charcoal sketch, like he’s stepped sideways from some monochrome world except for the grey-green of the eyes fixed on Spirit like he’s a troublesome puzzle. “What do you want?”

It’s not aggressive; the Enforcer sounds legitimately confused, as if he can’t imagine any reason someone would want to spend time with him. The implication settles into Spirit’s throat, tightens it with empathetic sadness so when he speaks it sounds a little strained in spite of his best efforts to sound casual. “I want to understand you. Figure out how your mind works.” He tips his head, offers a grin that is only barely forced. “And it makes me feel important, having such an effect on someone. I like feeling important.”

Stein rests his elbow on the desk to lean his chin on his hand, but the cover of his fingers can’t entirely mask the grin that is spreading over his mouth. “I bet you do. You’re a bit egotistical, aren’t you?”

Spirit shrugs. “I’m the one with the healthy Psycho-Pass here,  _Enforcer_.” When he kicks this time he’s more gentle and aiming for the other man’s ankle; his foot just brushes against Stein’s shin, more contact than impact. “You have no room to criticize me.”

“Mm.” There’s a pause, though that smile is still lingering on the other man’s lips. The reciprocation for the almost-kick is so careful Spirit almost doesn’t feel the graze of the Enforcer’s ankle against his before it’s gone. “You really don’t want to figure out how my mind works. Did you miss the memo on how this relationship is supposed to work? We’re supposed to buffer you healthy citizens from the horrors of police work.”

Spirit waves a hand, brushing away the other man’s protests, and leans in over his knees so he’s looking slightly up at the other’s face. Stein doesn’t turn away or push back, just blinks down at him with that same faint confusion on his face. Spirit can just make out the white line of a scar running from the other’s silver hair under the bridge of his glasses, sweeping out in a curve over his cheek and under his ear. The injury must have been awful when it was fresh; now it’s faded until it’s almost impossible to see, just a pattern of history across the Enforcer’s skin.

“You’re interesting, though,” Spirit says without looking away from the curved line of that scar. “And I want to know why I make you better. It’s just me, right? No one else has had this effect on you.”

Stein looks away for the first time since he turned his chair out to face the Inspector, glances back at the screen of his computer even though his eyes are clearly out-of-focus and unseeing. “Yes. It’s just you.”

There’s something under that, an odd vocal resonance Spirit doesn’t recognize. “Aren’t you curious to know why?”

That gets another smile, this one razor-sharp. It touches down in Stein’s eyes and pulls the Enforcer’s stare back to Spirit’s face. “You know what they say about curiosity.”

Spirit starts to grin himself, unconscious echo of the other man’s expression. “You  _are_  curious.”

“I am,” Stein agrees.

Spirit leans back in his chair, flashes his best smile. “Well. Shouldn’t you be focused on collecting data?”

Stein’s laugh is startlingly loud, clear and sharp and shockingly genuine for all that it comes out in a monotone. “You’re not going to give this up.”

“Nope.” Spirit pushes back and gets to his feet; when he offers his hand the Enforcer’s gaze drops to his wrist, stays there as the redhead keeps talking. “Come on, I want lunch. If you come with me I’ll treat you.”

There’s another pause, just a moment too long; Spirit is reminded vividly of their first meeting, the offset hesitation to the other’s movements. Then Stein straightens in his chair and reaches out to close his hand on Spirit’s. His fingers are colder than Spirit expects but his grip is as steady as his eyes when he looks up, and his smile lingers in his gaze more than on his lips.

“Okay,” he says, and lets Spirit pull him to his feet.


	5. Parallels

It’s far too easy to let himself forget. It was a momentary lapse, to start, just a smile, just a conversation, but then Stein lost track of the problem, got distracted by the light in Spirit’s eyes when he smiles, or the easy way his laughter bubbles up his throat, or the optimism written in every line of his face. And then it’s  _easy_ , too easy to just let it happen, to be responsive instead of cold when Spirit grins at him in the morning, or to lean forward when the other man hangs over the back of his chair so the redhead can rest his arms against Stein’s shoulders. Stein’s not thinking at all when he kicks the Inspector in return for the impact of the other’s shoe when the Enforcer’s not looked at him in too long, and he doesn’t spare a moment to realize that he’s smiling more, and more easily, and that sometimes he goes hours without remembering that he is an Enforcer and Spirit is an Inspector.

He’s almost grateful for Medusa, when she points it out. He needs to remember, after all, remember that he is past saving, was declared such when he was barely old enough to understand the concept, that he is alone and that it is safer that way if he isn’t to hurt anyone.

Spirit has come in with no real reason beyond some poorly-cobbled together excuse of a question, has leaned in over the back of Stein’s chair as he has shown a tendency to do. Stein, for his part, tips himself back an inch in invitation even though he doesn’t look up, and Spirit’s fingers land on his shoulder like they always do, with a feigned casualness that neither of them believes. But his wrist is against Stein’s neck, the faint warmth of skin-on-skin unwinds some of the tension from the Enforcer’s neck, and Stein is just starting to angle himself carefully back, to turn accidental into the edge of deliberate, when the blonde offers, “For christ’s sake, don’t you two have a  _room_?”

It’s tame, for Medusa, but Stein flinches and Spirit jumps, and even though the redhead leans back in in defiant return to his original position the charm is gone, the contact is just making Stein self-conscious instead of thrilled now. The motion isn’t lost on the other Enforcer, either. Her Coefficient often swings higher than Stein’s, sometimes even higher than Giriko’s, but she’s never anything but calculating. Stein respects that about her, regardless of his personal feelings. He hasn’t had personal feelings on the subject, before.

“You’re the one I’m worried for, pretty boy,” she purrs, and Stein doesn’t have to look to know she’s turned around backwards in her chair, draped her arms out long and sinuous in front of her. “He’s not going to be anything but trouble for you. You don’t want to end up like us, do you?”

“It’s not like that,” Spirit says stubbornly, but Stein can feel the tension building under his skin through that point of contact.

“Yeah, that’s what Justin said too,” Medusa says, and Stein sighs even before there’s a hiss of warning from Giriko over his shoulder. It doesn’t stop Medusa -- he didn’t expect it to, really -- other than to slow her words to a teasing drawl. She likes having a target, even if it’s not the one she was originally aiming for. “Thought he was gonna be a big damn hero.”

“What are you talking about?” That’s Spirit, again, trying to sound dismissive but really just curious. Stein blinks at the screen in front of him, and his expression doesn’t show any of the resignation turning his blood cold and his heartbeat slow.

“No one told you yet?” The room is perfectly silent, now, heavy with the storm they can all feel waiting to break. “ _Inspector_  Law used to be one of our keepers. Just like you, before he decided he wanted to save poor irredeemable Giriko from his tragic existence. Thought he had a holy mission, a crusade of salvation.” Medusa heaves a put-upon sigh. Her chair squeaks faintly as she twists idly. “And, well. You can see how well  _that_  turned out. What  _is_  your Pass, now, Justin, usually?”

“Shut up.” That’s Giriko, not Justin, but the words are set with more aggression as a result. In his head Stein adds a few more points to his running tally of Giriko’s Coefficient. He’ll be right at the edge of Eliminator, now.

“Course maybe it wasn’t the proximity,” Medusa goes on, entirely ignoring the other man’s warning. “Maybe if it really was as pure an attachment as I’m  _sure_  yours is he’d have been fine. But, hey, carnal desires get the best of us  _all_ , right?”

There’s no more warning, at least not coherently. There  _is_  the sound of Giriko’s chair crashing back against the wall, a burble of smoky laughter from Medusa, some almost-protest from Justin -- and Stein swings himself sideways, towards the door, pulls away from Spirit’s contact and makes for the exit without waiting to see if Giriko will actually get shot this time, if he’ll survive this one or not.

He isn’t sure if he’s hoping the Inspector will follow him or not. He’s not surprised, at least, at the sound of footsteps in his wake as he strides down the hall, and when Spirit calls out after him he’s actively expecting the sound.

“Stein, wait.”

Stein should just keep walking. He can’t manage that, so he contents himself with drawing to a halt but not turning around. That doesn’t stop Spirit, of course -- the redhead just comes around his shoulder so he can face the Enforcer, so there’s nowhere for Stein to look but into the steady blue of his eyes.

“Don’t run away from me.” He’s trying for joking, forcing a smile and a chuckle, but neither touches the edgy fear in his eyes. “I don’t want to be left alone with that much tension in the room either.”

“You left too,” Stein points out. He should try to move, push past Spirit and continue down the hall, but he can’t make himself move away from the confrontation that is about to happen.

“Look.” Spirit sighs, crosses his arms over his chest like he’s bracing himself for an unpleasant task. Stein doesn’t move but he can feel the same cold certainty settling into him, the sense of loss preemptively sweeping icy calm into him. “What Medusa was saying.”

“It’s true,” Stein offers, a last-ditch effort to head off this conversation, but for once Spirit is unwilling to be swayed. He shakes his head in physical rejection of the subject change, continues on.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s different. We’re different,” and Stein wishes that pronoun didn’t pull a responsive flinch of emotion out of him, something half-thrill and half-horror. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

It would be easier if Stein didn’t care. It is unfortunate, he recognizes distantly, that he should care enough about this Inspector that he doesn’t want to see him hurt. If he didn’t care, like he didn’t care about Justin, he could watch the inevitable descent with clinical distance. But he does care, it’s infecting all his decisions and all his perspectives with emotion until he can’t tell what is rational anymore.

“It’s not that different,” Stein says.

The words are chill, inverted from the weight they carry, but even without the vocal triggers Spirit blinks in immediate understanding, even before he collects himself to insist, “It  _is_ , I’m not like Justin and you’re not like Giriko. I make you  _better_ , not the other way around.”

Stein steps forward, close enough that his extra inch of height comes out in the visible shadow he casts onto the redhead, close enough that Spirit’s chin has to come up to maintain the stubborn eye contact the redhead is clinging to. The Inspector doesn’t step back, though, doesn’t blink or flinch or shift at all, and that makes it a  _challenge_ , that makes Stein  _curious_. He leans in over the last inches of distance, close enough that his hair brushes Spirit’s skin, close enough that he can feel the other’s breathing on his mouth, close enough that he has to tip his head so their noses will fit together. When he takes a breath it’s warm and radiant from the redhead’s body; he holds it for a moment, lets the heat settle into him before he sighs and lets it go.

“It’s not that different,” he says again without pulling away. He’s whispering, so softly he can barely hear his own words, but Spirit’s not moving away and they’re so close anything Stein can hear Spirit can too. Stein can hear the shake in the other’s exhale, can see the individual lashes of Spirit’s eyes when the redhead shuts his eyes, and he stays longer than he should, stays where he is when Spirit tips his head up in a motion that could be accidental but isn’t, stays still so for just a minute their lips catch together.

When Stein steps back Spirit doesn’t follow. The Inspector opens his eyes, stares at Stein for a long moment, but Stein doesn’t have anything else to say, and when Spirit stays quiet he dips his head to look away. When he moves past the other Spirit doesn’t follow him, and he is careful not to brush against the Inspector’s shoulder as he goes, even though the air between them is humming with tension he imagines he can see.


	6. Regret

They almost never talk about it. It’s safer that way, most of the time. Sometimes the story comes up with the rest of the team, but by this time Justin has become desensitized to Medusa’s barbs, and Giriko will rise to any bait that’s laid in front of him. It hardly counts as a hot-button topic, in that context. Even today, when only Sid’s opportune arrival prevented the use of Dominators, Justin isn’t expecting to talk about it.

Maybe Medusa hit closer to home than he thought she did. Maybe Giriko is seeing the parallels with the new Inspector, and maybe it’s harder to watch from a more objective remove. Maybe it’s just that the other Enforcer has worked his way around to the conversation again, as he does sometimes. The reason doesn’t matter, in the end, just that Justin is starting to slide over the edge into the comforting oblivion of sleep when Giriko says, apropos of nothing, “Do you regret it?”

Justin doesn’t need context for this particular question, not when he’s answered it dozens of times since his reassignment from Inspector to Enforcer. He also doesn’t need time to come back to consciousness. The edge under the other man’s voice is enough to bring him there instantly.

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly and clearly like he always does. “I don’t know what it would be like if I hadn’t done what I did.” He twists sideways so he’s on his back instead of his side, staring up at the blank shadows of Giriko’s ceiling. “Do you?”

That’s not part of it. Justin doesn’t ask the questions; Giriko asks, and Justin answers, and then they both lie awake pretending to be asleep for hours. The other man stiffens at the unexpected query, and when he speaks his voice is rough and vicious with surprise. “What the hell are you asking that for? It doesn’t make a  _difference_ , right?” His head comes in against Justin’s bare shoulder, heavy and bruising with intentional force. Justin can feel the dig of metal against his skin from the inset piercing in Giriko’s nose. “‘Sides, I have what I want, right? Pretty little fuckbuddy, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re sane or not.”

Justin wiggles his arm in under Giriko’s head so he can grab at a handful of the other’s hair and jerk hard enough that the older man hisses in pain. “Don’t be an  _idiot_ , Giriko. I can tell the difference between your words and Medusa’s, or do you think my intelligence vanished when my Coefficient rose?”

Giriko grins into Justin’s skin and doesn’t speak, but after a moment some of the aggressive tension fades from his shoulders and Justin lets his fistful of hair go, strokes his fingers over the other man’s scalp in unusually gentle contact as if he’s making up for the hurt.

“I really don’t know,” he says again. “I’m glad I have you, at least. I just don’t know if that will make up for everything I lost, in the end.”

Giriko grunts wordlessly, reaches out to hook his arm around Justin’s chest and drag the other in against him by his hip like he’s holding him in place, like he’s holding him steady by sheer physical effort. It makes Justin smile, even though his eyes are burning with the threat of tears that only the darkness is hiding. He knows, and Giriko knows, that all the optimism in the world doesn’t change the fact that Justin’s Coefficient is climbing every day, only a point or two but inexorable nonetheless, that every time the subject comes up Giriko’s own spikes higher, closer and closer to the edge of lethality. They are living on borrowed time, and Justin can  _see_  the timer, can watch the digits click down if he feels morbid about it.

Giriko tries to avoid it. It’s better for him, that way. In the end Justin  _is_  good for him, if only as a temporary fix to an insoluble problem. He’s bought the other man a few more months of survival by sacrificing his own stability, it doesn’t do any good to undo that good by lingering on the negative. But Justin thinks about it, can’t get away from the knowledge except briefly, through sleep or violence or sex, and in the dark like this he can see the conclusion written in the still shadows of the ceiling.

Even then, with Giriko holding onto him so tightly his fingers are leaving bruises and with wet trickling across Justin’s cheeks, the blond isn’t sure he regrets anything. Everybody dies, eventually, and there is something to be said for not being alone in the meantime.


	7. Recognition

Spirit can’t even blame Sid. That would help, a little, if he could rant at least in the comfort of his own thoughts about the other Inspector putting him in this situation. But it’s been almost a week since the almost-not-quite-kiss in the hall, and exactly as long since Stein has spoken to Spirit directly, and when Sid called Spirit in today there was an apology in his face even before he started speaking.

“We’re short-handed,” he started, as if Spirit didn’t already know that. “I’m not going to be oblique here -- that’s not the sort of man I am. I need you to go out to collect a target, and I need you to go with Stein.”

Spirit could feel his spine stiffen, his face fall into lines of protest even though he had no intention of voicing such, and that must have been as clear to Sid as it was to him. “I’m sorry. I can’t send Medusa out after this target for personal reasons, and while Justin would likely be fine Giriko --”

Sid had hesitated, then, and rather than waiting for an explanation of what Spirit knows to be true the redhead had jumped in, aware that he sounded stiff but unable to do anything about it. “I understand. It’s fine, we’re coworkers, we make a good team.”

Sid’s eyebrows had gone up, but he hadn’t pushed either an explanation or more apology on Spirit, just reviewed the facts of the case and wished him luck with the formal routine of regularity before Spirit nodded and left to sit in an empty room with his head in his hands so he could wait for his heartbeat to slow.

It hadn’t been bad, in the end. Stein had nodded, not a flicker of response on his face, and if Medusa had chuckled not-so-quietly from the corner she didn’t say anything, and Spirit was able to pretend he wasn’t flushing with self-consciousness. The ride out to the apartment building was silent, the Enforcer staring out the window and entirely ignoring Spirit, which was one of the better options as far as the Inspector’s mental state was concerned. But then they made it inside, up the stairs and down the hall to the oversized apartment in question to find it obviously deserted.

“Just wait for her to come back,” Sid’s voice had ordered when they called, like it was obvious, and so Spirit led the way around the corner at the end of the hallway, and settled in with his adrenaline-taut shoulders against the wall and Stein uncomfortably close next to him, and that’s where they’ve been since, for almost an hour now. The silence started out awkward, then turned into professional patience, then back to awkward, and stayed there so long that Spirit is sure nothing he can do will possibly make things worse. Besides, his heart is racing and it’s not just from the strain of waiting for a possible fight; it’s the dark shadows, the slow pace of breathing next to him, the way Stein’s mouth looks in the dark, the fact that he can’t stop  _looking_  at the Enforcer’s mouth even when he tries.

“Stein,” he finally says, soft into the silence of the surroundings. Stein glances at him but doesn’t speak or gesture at him to be quiet, which is very nearly encouragement compared to what Spirit was expecting to get. “Can we. Talk?”

Stein looks away again, back down the hallway they’re watching. “What do you want to talk about, Inspector?” His tone is perfectly steady, calm and cool and emotionless, and the title at the end is loaded with all the force of a cell door slamming shut.

Spirit doesn’t look away. Stein’s watching the corridor and that means he can watch the other’s face for any flicker of response when he says, “Don’t you like me?”

There is such a lack of reaction that the Enforcer either expected the question or was truly braced for anything. He doesn’t blink or look away, and when he says, “That’s not the point,” his voice is just as calm as if they’re talking about the weather.

“That’s exactly the point,” Spirit declares. “You won’t even look at me and we’re supposed to be working together.”

“We are working together,” Stein points out. “Right now, in fact.”

Spirit laughs. He can’t help it, and he tries to muffle the sound, but there is a snort of laughter even his best attempts can’t entirely stop. And it gets Stein to look at him, just briefly, tugs almost-a-smile at the corner of his mouth before the Enforcer can will it away.

“You do like me,” Spirit says once he can trust his voice to maintain a whisper again. “You’re being  _stupid_ , Stein.”

“We’re working,” Stein doesn’t answer. “You’re not so new you can’t keep focused on the job.”

“You won’t  _talk_  to me any other time.” Spirit shoves an elbow into Stein’s side, harder than he intends but with the end result he wanted, which is the Enforcer’s head coming around so Stein is looking at him. “If you weren’t  _ignoring_  me all the time I wouldn’t --”

He trails off, not because of anything Stein does but because of something in the other’s face, some tension in the lines of his mouth or some shadows clinging to his eyelashes. Stein looks like he’s humming with strain that Spirit can’t put a finger on, like he’s about to throw himself off a cliff, and when the Enforcer blinks his eyes drop down, just by a few inches and just for a breath, but Spirit’s watching and Spirit sees.

“Fuck,” he says, and lurches forward so his mouth lands more-or-less on Stein’s. He doesn’t drop his Dominator, at least, although the handle ends up digging into the Enforcer’s hip when Spirit grabs at him to hold him still. He’s half-expecting the other man to jerk back, is grabbing at his shoulder to keep him there, but although Stein keeps his own weapon pointed away his other hand comes up into Spirit’s hair instead of pushing at his shoulder, tangles into a fist on the red strands so he can shove Spirit back against the wall. He’s following as fast as he pushes, Stein’s shoulders slam into Spirit’s and his leg comes in between the Inspector’s, and he’s kissing back like his sanity depends on it. His teeth are scraping against Spirit’s lips, and at some point the Inspector opened his mouth and Stein took the invitation and Spirit can’t keep track of what he’s doing, if he’s clinging to Stein’s shoulder and tracing the other man’s mouth with his tongue or just collapsed against the wall and letting the Enforcer do what he wants.

He’s forgotten where they are and what they’re supposed to be doing, so thoroughly that when Stein jerks back he thinks for a moment that it’s him before he catches the faint sound of voices and footsteps at the other end of the hall. Stein hisses some half-heard curse, takes a breath and edges around the corner to see what’s going on. Spirit tries to catch his breath and his balance, straighten his hair from the knots left by the Enforcer’s hand, and by the time the other man comes back and looks at him he’s mostly under control.

“Is it them?” he asks. His voice hardly shakes at all.

Stein just nods, all professionalism again, jerks his head towards the corner and lifts the weapon in preparation. Spirit follows his lead, both with regard to the weapon and with moving down the corridor, the adrenaline of pleasure turning into nerves with no stop-off at calm along the way.

There are voices inside the room when they get to the door; Stein waits until Spirit nods, then aims a careful kick at the cheap doorframe and knocks the lock clear out of the wood. The Inspector is stepping through first while Stein gets his balance back, raising his Dominator in front of his face like a shield from the two occupants of the room.

“Lift your hands please,” he declares, and this time the words don’t tremble at all. “We’re with the police, we need to perform a scan on you.”

The woman in the room smiles slowly, like a seduction in miniature, and lifts her arms over her head, but the man just over her shoulder is a breath slower, like he’s following her lead. Spirit doesn’t see the ramifications of this until there’s the glint of the overhead light off the metal in the man’s hand; even then, there’s a moment of confusion as he stares at the object through the Dominator’s scan that declares the woman to be a target for Non-Lethal Paralyzer. Why is he pointing a gun at Spirit? It’s not like it’ll fire, Spirit knows his Coefficient is far too low for that. He’s just bringing the scanner around to the man to scan him when there’s a wordless shout from the doorway, where Stein is just coming in, and that’s all the warning he gets before there’s a shove that knocks him clear off his feet and an explosion of sound too loud to understand for a moment. He hits the ground hard, training keeping his hands on the weapon in his hands instead of out to catch himself, and the impact tightens his hands on the trigger before he can tell who he’s aiming at. The woman crumples, the man moves, and Spirit is lifting the Dominator to follow him, sparing just a glance for the Enforcer who shoved him off his feet, when he sees the blood.

That does what the fall couldn’t, turns his hands nerveless so the Dominator drops to the ground, and the man rounding the corner of the doorway is forgotten entirely as Spirit’s mind goes blank with shock and he reaches out to touch the liquid spilling dark over Stein’s stomach.

“Fuck,” the Enforcer says to the ceiling. His voice is shaking, now. “You have got to learn to recognize an old-fashioned gun, Spirit.”

“Oh my god,” Spirit says without thinking. There’s blood all over Stein’s hands, blood all over  _his_  hands,  _Stein’s_  blood. “Oh my  _god_ , what --” He touches without thinking, pushes against the Enforcer’s fingers, and Stein jerks and gasps in pain so Spirit snatches his hands back. He’s starting to shake, his skin is flashing cold and he can’t think, he can’t breathe, there are too many priorities right now and he can’t adequately judge them.

“Call for backup,” Stein grates, the words ragged with pain. “Call for medical backup, Spirit, and call the rest of the team to track down the man too.”

Spirit takes a breath. It’s not deep enough, it’s too fast and too shallow to offer any comfort, but Stein’s eyes are shut and he’s still bleeding onto the floor, and Spirit can’t stop shaking but his hands obey the Enforcer, dial back to base so his voice, cool and disembodied, can explain what happened to Sid. It’s not until the medical team arrives to collect Stein and Sid has taken Spirit back home, deposited him bloody and shaking in his front hallway with an order to shower and sleep it off, that the Inspector realizes Stein called him by his name again.


	8. Apology

The one thing to be said for the Dominators is that they don’t  _hurt_  afterward.

The pain wasn’t so bad when Stein’s IV was laced with morphine, like it was for the first three days. But the morphine makes him blissful in a way that unsettles some core part of him, like he’s always forgetting something important just out of reach of his memory, so in the end Stein just starts lying about the pain, takes the sharp ache in his abdomen over the delirious half-waking the drugs give him. Even refusing the medication can’t speed his recovery, though, two weeks in bed and then two more before he can go back out in the field. The bed rest is enough of a pain on its own, but the lack of activity is far worse, or at least Stein tells himself that’s why his enforced passivity chafes at him so.

He can only convince himself of this for so long, though, and when he wakes up at the end of the first week to see Inspector Albarn leaning against the doorway the whole thing crumbles into truly pathetic gratitude for the other’s company.

“Hey,” Spirit says first, which is good because Stein really doesn’t know what to say, particularly when he’s sure the pain in his body will be audible if he tries to actually speak. “How’re you doing?”

“Bored,” Stein says honestly. His voice  _does_  grate over the words in a way that makes Spirit flinch, but the other man doesn’t look out to the hallway like he’s thinking of leaving, so the Enforcer goes on. “Not much to do but wait to get better.”

“You could always reflect on the stupidity of Inspectors,” the redhead points out without moving from the doorway. He has his arms crossed in front of him so Stein can barely see the green of his shirt for the dark cover of his jacket, and his shoulders are hunched forward until they belie the amusement in the self-deprecating smile the redhead forces. “Particularly those who forget their training and get you shot for your trouble.”

“Are you apologizing?” Stein asks. He’s trying not to smile but it’s hard, with Spirit right there where he can see even if he can’t reach him. “You’re being so vague it’s hard to tell.”

That gets a laugh. The other man does look out at the hallway, then, but the motion turns his face in profile so Stein can see the way he’s chewing at his lip like he’s trying to pull inspiration from it. “Yeah. Yes. I’m apologizing.” There’s a pause, longer than it should be; then the other man takes a breath, lets his lip go, looks back at the Enforcer. “For getting you shot.”

The implication -- that that’s  _all_  he’s apologizing for -- isn’t lost on Stein, but he hasn’t decided yet how he wants to respond to that particular non-comment, or if he wants to respond at all, so he ignores it and just says, “You didn’t  _get_  me shot. I stepped in front of the gun myself.”

“You  _threw_  yourself in front of the shot,” Spirit corrects sharply. “For me. You could have let me take it, I probably would have survived and it would have taught me a lesson.”

“You don’t know that,” Stein says as calmly as he can manage, though his voice is going rougher with the mental image of Spirit taking a bullet to the chest or the head as much as it is with pain. “Are you really saying you’d rather you had been shot?”  
“No,” Spirit says. His forehead is creased with emotion or confusion, Stein’s not sure which, and he looks back out towards the empty hallway, though he still shows no sign of moving. “I’m saying I’d rather you  _hadn’t_  been.”

That makes Stein laugh, only shortly before the pain reminds him what a bad idea that is, but it is a laugh nonetheless, and a real one. “You say that like it was one of the options. You are too optimistic for your own good. Are you going to stand there in the doorway and wait for an invitation to sit down?”

“I wasn’t waiting for an invitation,” the redhead declares, but a little of the tension drains from his shoulders, and he straightens and comes into the room so he can drop heavily into a chair beside Stein’s bed. With the proximity Stein can see shadows collecting under his eyes, lines of exhaustion around his mouth and over his forehead, the way his shoulders slump like they weigh twice as much as they should.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Stein observes. “How long?”

Spirit looks up, the motion slow and dragging instead of a quick shocked response. “How did you know?”

“How long?” Stein repeats.

Spirit looks back down at his hands, reaches up to drag his fingers through his hair. “A week. It’s not deliberate, I know it’s bad for my Hue, but I just...can’t.”

The coincidence with Stein’s injury isn’t lost on the Enforcer but he doesn’t comment. “ _I’m_  sleeping more than you are. That’s not a good sign.”

Spirit grins weakly in response to the teasing. “Yeah, well, you have healing to do. I’ll be fine once I get a full night’s rest, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure you will be,” Stein says levelly and with no trace of sarcasm. Spirit peers at him like he’s looking for the catch, but Stein just gazes back. Sincerity is a new thing for him, he’s not sure how to emphasize it.

It doesn’t matter. Whatever he sees is enough to convince Spirit. He smiles, reaches out to touch his fingers to the sheet around Stein’s waist as tentatively as if he’s expecting a slap. Stein doesn’t move, is as still as if that touch is a butterfly landing on him, and after a moment the Inspector relaxes enough that Stein can actually feel the pressure of fingers on his hip.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Spirit says, dropping his gaze to the fingers resting on the sheet.

Stein doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do, either, but after a moment he reaches out -- the movement slow and jerky with unfamiliarity -- to brush his fingers over Spirit’s crimson hair. The Inspector doesn’t speak; he shuts his eyes, sighs like he hasn’t breathed in days, and leans down with no selfconsciousness to drop his head against his arm. Stein can feel his weight settle into the mattress, can see the tension pour out of the other man’s spine until he’s slumped over the bed in a picture of exhaustion.

Stein doesn’t smile. There’s no one to see, and that means there’s no reason to control his expression. He just stares at the Inspector, blinks down at him while he waits for understanding to come. It doesn’t, not when he waits, and not when he starts to stroke his fingers through the fall of red hair, and not when the Inspector’s breathing slows into the even rhythm of deep sleep. That’s okay. A calm that has nothing to do with mental comprehension and everything to do with the warm glow spreading through his veins is easing out the half-panic of uncertainty in the Enforcer, and when he shuts his eyes that delayed smile comes more easily than it ever has before.


	9. Worried

Spirit should have gone home hours ago. It’s not even as if he has any work to get done, or at least none that he’s working on. He can’t actually work on anything, hasn’t been able to since Stein left on an assignment with Sid and Medusa, and while he’s pretty sure Justin at least noticed his lack of productivity the blond didn’t say anything, either about his nervous energy or the fact that he lingers far later than he usually does.

It’s perfectly fine that Stein went out an on assignment without him, Spirit tells himself. He’ll be fine, he did this plenty before Spirit had ever so much as thought of a career in this department and obviously he survived all of that. But after Justin and Giriko leave for the day and Spirit is left alone he gives up on even an attempt at focus, lets himself lean forward to rest his forehead on his crossed arms and tries to pretend he’s not jittery with anxiety.

He’s still there when the front door to the building opens over an hour later, still so tight-wound with energy that even the late hour doesn’t tempt him with sleep. Any attempt at feigned casualness is lost in the first wave of relief; Spirit’s on his feet and at the door by the time the other three have made it into the building. Medusa is saying something, waving a hand and laughing with the particular combination of sultry and sharp she has perfected, and Sid is listening for once, smiling faintly like the late hour has stripped him of some of his professional distance. And there’s Stein, trailing in their wake as he clears off the hologram he had on over his clothes as he steps through the doorway, and Spirit is moving forward before he thinks it through.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he blurts, reaching out instinctively to touch at the Enforcer’s blood-soaked shoulder. Stein visibly jumps at the sound of his voice, startles back from his touch, but Spirit’s too committed to the motion and follows through anyway until his hand lands on the damp cloth. “Are you okay?”

Stein is still leaning away, all his weight on his back foot like he’s in the middle of stumbling back and out of Spirit’s reach. His hair and face are nearly as bad as his clothes, as if he’s been caught in an unexpected downpour of blood instead of rain. Medusa laughs, says, “That’s not  _his_ ,” but Spirit doesn’t look back at her, and there’s a murmur of voices from Sid and the other Enforcer before they move away down the hall towards the office and leave Stein and Spirit alone in the entry.

After a moment Stein blinks, and swallows, and completes his stalled step backward and away from Spirit’s touch. “It’s not mine, mostly.”

“Mostly?” Spirit is aware that he sounds frantic, strained and panicked and overemotional, but he can’t control his voice any more than he can keep himself from following when the Enforcer turns and walks away. “ _Mostly_?”

“It can be a dangerous job,” Stein says without turning around. His back is significantly cleaner; Spirit’s rationality has caught up, processed that the suspect must have hit Eliminator levels and Stein must have been within arm’s reach when the Dominator went off, but that qualifier is lingering and turning over and over in his thoughts until he wants to strip Stein down to bare skin just to make sure he’s  _okay_.

“Why were you so  _close_?” Spirit demands, speeding his pace so he’s hovering just at Stein’s heels. “You shouldn’t have had to get any closer than line of sight, you must have been right on top of the target.”

“He was quick,” Stein says as if that’s enough explanation. “It takes a few seconds for the Dominators to complete their scan and it was easiest for me to close with him and hold him steady until Inspector Barret could get the shot off.”

Spirit opens his mouth to voice some attempt at a protest, but all that comes out is an incoherent whimper. He’s still trying to piece together a better approximation of rationality when Stein slows so the Inspector draws level with him just as he comes to a stop.

“I  _was_  going to take a shower,” Stein observes, looking at Spirit out of the corner of his eye so he’s not quite turning his head towards the other man. “Did you want to keep fretting back in the office or come in and wait so you can convince yourself I’m okay?”

The invitation makes it into Spirit’s brain right away, rapidly followed by the ‘shower’ portion of the sentence, and by the time he’s saying, “ _Oh_ ” in an odd strangled undertone Stein is pulling open the door to his room, holding it open in an offer until the Inspector catches the weight and follows him in.

“You can keep talking,” Stein says without turning around. He’s grabbing the bottom edge of his shirt and Spirit is trying  _very_  hard not to watch the clothing as it comes up to expose white-pale skin but he’s not really succeeding in doing anything but flushing with self-consciousness. “I’ll just be around the corner, unless you’d rather I stayed in these.”

“No,” Spirit manages. He can barely get the sound out, sounds so dreadful that Stein turns back to look at him. The Enforcer is balling up the filthy shirt as he moves, and it turns out his skin is a lot cleaner than the clothes he was wearing, there’s only trickle of liquid along his collarbone and a stripe across his ribs that might be his own rather than the suspect’s. Then Spirit manages to look away and down at the floor so he only hears the amusement in the Enforcer’s voice rather than seeing the grin at his self-conscious embarrassment.

“Take a seat, I’ll be right out.” Stein moves around the corner; as soon as he’s out of eyeshot Spirit takes a breath and lifts his head to actually look around the room. There’s not much, a bed in the corner and a desk with precarious stacks of books clustered around the legs, a mismatched set of chairs and a heavy dresser shoved up against the wall. It’s a small space but the furniture makes it look empty and oddly barren; there’s no color, everything is in shades of grey and black. That might be a hologram but Spirit doubts it; the room has the look of carelessness rather than a deliberate styling choice.

The sound of running water starts. Spirit drops into one of the chairs -- it’s softer than it looks - and tries very very hard not to think too much about the splash of water from around the corner.

“Do you often get hurt?” he asks, loud to be heard over the shower.

“Not badly.” Stein sounds perfectly calm, even half-shouting back. “Last time with you was the worst in a while.”

“Thanks,” Spirit calls, rolling his eyes even though there’s no one to see. “The guilt trip is much appreciated.”

He thinks there might be a laugh but it’s hard to tell. “I’m just answering your question, not trying to provoke an emotional response.” The water shuts off and when the Enforcer goes on speaking it’s accordingly softer. “And you have nothing to do with this one.”

“Thanks, that’s very comforting,” Spirit deadpans. “As long as you’re getting injured while I’m not there everything is  _fine_.”

There is a beat. “You were really worried.”

“You noticed.” Spirit has to laugh; he can’t help the self-deprecating amusement. “What tipped you off?”

“Your presence in the office at ten at night was a good start,” Stein says. There’s motion at the corner of Spirit’s eye; when he looks up the other man is coming back out, wearing clean jeans and a bandage across his side and nothing else, not even his glasses. His eyes are very green in the monochrome surroundings, the only color in the room to Spirit’s perspective, and with his shirt off there is a visible tracery of pale scars over his arms, wrists, chest, like he’s been collecting them.

Spirit is on his feet and moving, reaching out to touch the clean white of the bandage before Stein has a chance to retreat. The Enforcer stiffens but doesn’t flinch, this time; when Spirit looks up the other is watching his face with no expression at all.

Spirit swallows. “This happens a lot,” he observes rather than asking, lifting his free hand to hover over the echoed lines on the other’s skin without quite touching.

“Yes.” Stein isn’t blinking, isn’t moving.

Spirit lets his fingers drift closer, ghost along a line that curves over the other man’s shoulder and veers sharp over his collarbone. “Do you mind?”

Stein takes a breath, a little harder than he needs to, leans in very slightly so Spirit’s fingers press in against his skin properly, and when he says “No” Spirit is pretty sure he’s answering a different question than the Inspector meant to be asking. Spirit drags his fingers down an inch, lets his whole hand press flat against the web of scars so he can feel the slow pace of the Enforcer’s breathing, and when he tips his head and leans in the other man meets him halfway, has his fingers curling in against Spirit’s jacket even before their lips meet. It’s careful, this time, slow like the first time but more deliberate, steady like Spirit’s fingers on Stein’s skin; Stein’s lips are warm and damp from the shower and his hair is dripping onto Spirit’s shoulder and the Inspector doesn’t care at all. He can feel the Enforcer shaking, his breathing trembling like there’s electricity humming just under his skin, and when Spirit slides the hand at Stein’s hip around to his back the tension in the other man’s spine melts under his touch. Stein’s hand come in against the back of Spirit’s neck, so tentative Spirit almost doesn’t feel it until the redhead sighs and opens his mouth, and everything settles into place for a minute. Spirit’s not sure who’s doing what, if he’s the one pulling Stein in closer or if the Enforcer’s hold on his jacket is the driving force, if it’s his own skin that’s radiating heat or the lingering warmth of the water on Stein’s. It doesn’t matter anyway -- for a moment there’s no tension, no stress, no almost-avoidance or desperation born of the threat of loss, just Stein’s lips on his and fingers against skin and clothes and the warm press of their bodies together.

When they separate it’s at the same time and not far; Stein’s hands stay where they are, and Spirit makes no effort to move away, so they’re just standing together in the middle of Stein’s room, breathing too-fast in sync with each other.

“What are we going to do?” Spirit asks.

Stein smiles. It touches his eyes in spite of the sadness lingering at the corners of the expression. “I have no idea.”

Spirit laughs weakly. “Okay.” He should be more worried, he feels distantly, should probably pause to work this out more thoroughly before he goes on. But Spirit’s not ever been very good at careful planning -- recklessness is more his style, honestly, and Stein is  _right there_. So he leans back in to kiss him again, and he can feel Stein’s smile melt into responsiveness before he stops thinking about it at all.


	10. Fire

Spirit has been truly dreadful for Stein’s productivity. There was a time when Stein could come in to the office and work steadily all day with only a break for lunch, and that only when he remembered to eat. It’s not that he cared particularly about being productive -- not that he cared much about anything, really -- just that there was nothing better to do, and the mental effort of research offered a numbing satisfaction that he could lose himself in.

He doesn’t forget who he is ever, anymore. He doesn’t skip meals, either; Spirit will bring him lunch if he doesn’t take a break to eat, and after the second time that happened he gave up resisting and just started trailing the Inspector down to the cafeteria when noon or close enough to it happened. He can only make it about twenty minutes working on one particular project uninterrupted before the other will kick him, or bump him with an elbow, or stretch excessively and declare that he’s going to go get some coffee, and everything that Spirit does catches Stein’s attention and drags it away from whatever he’s trying to work on.

Stein doesn’t really mind. He can’t find it in him to be anything other than faintly bemused at the abrupt shift his existence has taken, and no one else seems discomfited by the sharp decrease in his efficiency. Justin never reacts to anything other than Giriko, and Giriko doesn’t seem to care at all about the new Inspector one way or another. Inspector Barret has been remarkably tolerant as well -- sometimes Stein catches him watching the other Inspector, more speculative than concerned, but he is actively avoiding paying the Enforcer any additional attention and Stein takes that as very tentative encouragement, or at least tolerance.

That just leaves Medusa, though for a single person she is doing an excellent job of making up for everyone else’s lack of interest. After her volunteered information regarding Justin she has left the other two Enforcers out of it, though Stein isn’t sure if that’s from some sense of self-preservation or interest in keeping Giriko somewhat stable or just that Sid has told her not to. That still gives her plenty to work with, of course. Currently she’s turned around backwards and leaning against the back of her chair so she can drape her arms, and the scanner she’s holding, in Stein’s direction.

“Wow,” she drawls even though neither of the men are looking at her. “Damn, Stein, your new boyfriend is  _great_  for your Coefficient.”

Spirit glances at the other Enforcer and even without turning to look at him Stein can see the shadow of irritation that drops over his features. He’s not sure if it’s because of the taunting tone, or the comment about his Pass, or just because Medusa is flippantly assigning the title neither of them has yet said, at least out loud. It doesn’t really matter. Stein knows Spirit is going to rise to the bait, knows that the Inspector literally cannot resist the itching temptation of the comment, so he doesn’t turn and isn’t surprised when the question comes.

“What is it?”

Which is, of course, exactly what Medusa was looking for. “Ooo, wouldn’t you like to know? Wonder what  _yours_  is looking like.”

In spite of his best efforts to ignore the barbs that gets to Stein, stiffens his shoulders before he can force himself to relax, and the motion isn’t lost on the blond.

“Aren’t you curious?” Her voice is low, resonant with the taunt she throws at him, and just because Stein isn’t looking at her doesn’t mean he’s not listening. “Don’t you want to know what sort of an effect you’re having on your own personal savior?”

“Hey.” Spirit stands in Stein’s periphery. He doesn’t sound angry; if anything he sounds calmer, so steady the Enforcer looks up at him before he can stop himself. He  _looks_  calm too, his face is relaxed even when he extends a hand in silent request for the scanner. “Don’t needle him, my Coefficient is fine.”

“Sure about that, are you?” Medusa makes no move to relinquish the device. “Don’t think it’s gone up a couple points since you got here, this morning?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Spirit says levelly. “Minimal fluctuations are  _normal_.”

“For you,” Medusa says, and Stein knows where she’s going with this even before she goes on. “You’re trying to teach a  _machine_  humanity, honey. He’s  _broken_ , don’t you know, worse than Justin, worse than me, maybe worse than Giriko. At least we know what it is to  _feel_. The best you can hope for is to coax an imitation of emotion from him.” There’s a squeak as she pushes off the ground to swing idly in her chair. “Lucky for him you seem to have a martyr complex.”

“Stop it,” and Spirit is sounding angry now, heat rising under his voice like Stein knows it should be rising under his own skin, fire and resistance rather than the cold certainty of belief that is icing him over. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Sure.” Medusa raises her arm, throws the scanner hard enough that Spirit has to dodge sideways to catch it rather than getting hit. She’s on her feet before he’s regained his balance, striding out of the room and angling to clip the redhead’s shoulder with hers as she goes. “Have fun with the  _scientist_.” Her voice makes it an insult and a taunt at the same time, as much as the hand she lifts in a wave as she swings around the corner and out of sight.

“I hate her,” Spirit sighs as he watches her go. “I don’t know what I did to piss her off but she has it out for me.”

“She has it out for everyone,” Stein says, finally turning so he can reach out and tug the scanner free from Spirit’s hand. “It’s nothing personal.”

“She’s fond of you,” Spirit says, letting the Enforcer take the object from his hand. “Which might be the problem, come to think of it.”

Stein smiles, ducks his head so he’s looking at his own hands instead of the Inspector. “Yeah, maybe.” He wishes he could set the scanner aside along with Medusa’s taunting, or maybe that he could bring himself to just use it like he wants to, but he is trapped between not-caring and a flood of worry until he can’t lift the scanner and he can’t let it go, just turns it over and over in his hands.

There’s a pause while he stares at the idle motion of his hands and Spirit looks down at him. Then the Inspector huffs almost-a-sigh and almost-a-laugh, drops back into his chair and reaches out to close his fingers on Stein’s wrist with the same casual unconcern that always startles the Enforcer.

“Here.” He lifts the other man’s unresisting arm until the scanner is aimed straight at him, hits the button with his thumb before Stein can stop him. “I was just over 30 this morning.”

Stein stares at Spirit through the blue haze of the scanner for a moment without seeing the numbers on the screen. The Inspector’s eyes are very blue, glowing as they collect the electronic haze from the scanner, and for a breath it’s all Stein can do to breathe, much less remember how to read numbers. Then he blinks, and takes in the clear digits in front of him -- 37 -- while Spirit goes on speaking. He still hasn’t let Stein’s hand go; his arm is surprisingly steady support for the Enforcer’s wrist. “It’s probably a little higher right now because I’m irritated but it’s nothing major, right?”

Stein blinks his focus back onto Spirit’s face. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t speak or nod or indicate agreement at all, but the Inspector’s smile is as certain as if he’s delivered a speech of support.

“See?” He tugs the scanner out of the Enforcer’s hold, hesitates for a moment in his motion to drop it on the table. “Do you want me to scan you?”

That is an easy question. Stein shakes his head, sharp and quick, and Spirit lets go without hesitating at all. The trust of that instant response floods adrenaline through Stein’s veins; when he exhales it shakes in his throat and eddies of almost-heat ripple under his skin.

“It’s okay,” Spirit is saying. His hand is back on Stein’s wrist, just casual contact this time instead of the support he was offering a moment ago. “It’s okay, don’t let her get to you, alright?” He sounds soothing, calm and sincere and warm in a way Stein can’t imagine. It must be unbelievable to be so warm, his blood must feel like fire rushing through him.

When Stein reaches out to rest his hand against the Inspector’s shoulder, his thumb just catching bare skin, Spirit doesn’t flinch at the chill of his hands, just smiles and leans in to the touch. Stein shuts his eyes, and takes a deep breath, and lets the fire warm his fingertips until he can feel the beat of heat all down his arm and bleeding into his own pulse.


	11. Interruption

It takes Spirit several seconds longer than it should to identify the musical chime of an incoming call. Part of that is because his wristband isn’t in fact on his wrist but instead on the floor, probably underneath Stein’s shirt or his own jacket or maybe both. Part of that is because he’s not expecting a call at this hour, which is  _why_  his wristband is well out of reach. And most of it is because he’s distracted by the way Stein’s mouth feels against his shoulder, the way the Enforcer is dragging his teeth across the skin like he’s testing for a reaction from the redhead. He’s getting one, too, Spirit’s fingers are clenching into an involuntary fist in the other’s silver hair and he’s panting for breath and hasn’t even gotten his shirt all the way off yet, just half-unbuttoned and shoved down over his shoulder.

So the sound is difficult to focus on, difficult to place even when Spirit recognizes it as linked to something important. Stein reacts first, pulls away so he can blink down at Spirit’s face.

“Isn’t that your phone?” He sounds remarkably calm, given their situation and his own relative state of undress. It’s absolutely unfair, and he should  _not_  be so calm about the prospect of them being interrupted when Spirit hasn’t had a chance to follow up on their original late-night interlude in the last week. So Spirit growls in irritation only half-feigned, and hooks his leg around the Enforcer’s, and says, “It can wait,” before he shifts his weight to invert their positions.

Stein lets him -- Spirit’s pretty sure he couldn’t achieve the move, if the other man didn’t want him to -- falls back onto the bed with no attempt to catch himself so he lands with a satisfying impact. He’s smiling, too, the faint amusement far more of a victory than an expression more easily won on someone else, and he doesn’t offer further protest when Spirit leans down to kiss him again.

Then  _Stein’s_ phone rings. Some part of Spirit is expecting it, this time, because he recognizes the flat electronic beep far faster than his own more familiar ringtone, offers a rebuttal before Stein has even said anything.

“It can wait,” he repeats, shifts in sideways so he can lick against one of the smooth curves of white scar over the Enforcer’s neck. Stein tenses and almost shivers under the contact and it feels like a victory. “It can wait, stay with me, it can’t be important at this hour of the night.”

There is a moment when Spirit thinks he might have convinced him; there’s hesitation in every line of the Enforcer’s body, he can  _feel_  desire warring with responsibility under his hands. But then Stein sighs, and Spirit knows he’s decided, is pulling back even before Stein answers properly.

“It must be important, at this hour of the night,” he corrects. “And there’s nowhere else I could be but here.”

He’s right, for all that it’s irritating, so Spirit slides sideways to drop facedown into the mattress while Stein gets up and fishes his wristband from under the table where it ended up.

“Yes?” He sounds perfectly calm. It’s infuriating, Spirit is sure he could never sound so calm if he were answering the phone still flushed from the pressure of  _Stein’s_  mouth on his skin instead of vice versa.

“Stein.” That’s Sid’s voice, clear over the mild hum of static. He sounds professional as always but there’s a strain under his tone, something that makes Spirit sit up before he’s said more than the Enforcer’s name. “We have a situation. Are you at the office?”

“I’m in my quarters,” Stein says. He glances at Spirit, like he’s looking for reassurance or maybe just reminding himself that the other is there, lets out a breath. “Do you need me?”

“Yes. Is Inspector Albarn with you?”

Spirit grimaces with self-consciousness but Stein just says “Yes,” in that same flat tone, even though his eyes catch the light and sparkle with amusement for just a moment.

“Good.” Sid doesn’t comment further. “Bring him. I need you both here right now.”

“What happened?” Spirit asks, since Sid already knows he’s in the room and Stein appears ready to hang up with no further information.

“We were on a mission to secure a suspect, bring him in for treatment and observation. Things got messy.” There’s a brief pause, like Sid is taking a breath. “Medusa’s on the run.”

Spirit drops the coat he was just picking up from the floor. Stein doesn’t flinch, picks up the thread of conversation like he was the one having it all along. “Is she armed?”

“She has at least a knife.” There’s another one of those pregnant pauses. “I’ve been getting only intermittent contact from Justin, too, and none at all from Giriko.”

“Send Inspector Albarn your coordinates,” Stein says. His voice and face both express no concern at all that half their team is possibly rogue, that they may be going out to bring in or bring down their colleagues. “We’ll come straight there.”

Spirit is still standing frozen when Stein hangs up, his coat forgotten at his feet. The Enforcer looks him over; another smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and he comes forward, picking up the jacket as he does.

“This is not the direction I saw my relationship with your clothes going tonight,” he says as he reaches around to hold it for Spirit. The angle means he’s very close by necessity, Spirit can feel the words humming warm just alongside his cheek.

“Yeah, well, we’re agreed on that.” Spirit’s trying for humor but it falls flat even to his own ears. “Jesus, Stein, this is...not a good situation we’re walking in to.”

“I know.” The Enforcer pulls Spirit’s coat into place, turns away to collect his own shirt and tug it over his head. “We won’t have any backup at all, if Justin and Giriko are out too.”

Spirit huffs, crosses his arms over his still-rumpled shirt while Stein reaches for his glasses set on the table. “How can you be so  _calm_  about it?”

Stein pauses with his back to the Inspector, tips his head back so his hair falls over the collar of his shirt while he setting the frames in place. “The odds are stacked against us.” He sounds considering, like he’s looking at a puzzle from an odd angle. “I should be worried.” He pauses, shifts his weight so he’s turned in profile towards Spirit. “But.” A sideways glance, the tension of that smile again. “I just can’t picture us losing.”

Spirit should be angry. That’s no answer at all, really, there’s no logic there. But what hits him isn’t anger, it’s a flush of pleasure and inexplicable comfort, like Stein is predicting the future instead of just describing his intuition.

“Well.” Spirit pulls his jacket needlessly straight, runs a hand over his hair to straighten it. “Okay then.”

Stein grins at him, then, the full sharp edge of a real smile finally bursting over his face, and when he jerks his head towards the door Spirit nods, and leads the way out of the room.


	12. Regression

It’s easy to find Inspector Barett. He hasn’t moved from the location he sent to Spirit, even in the time it takes for the two of them to travel to the alley in question. That makes significantly more sense when Stein gets a look at the other Inspector; he’s leaning against the wall, his coat balled up and pressed in against his leg to slow the flow of blood from what must be a relatively serious wound. Spirit hesitates, even with the experience he’s gained since he started at the Department, but Stein keeps coming forward towards the other Inspector until he’s looking down at the other man.

“The medical team is on their way?” It’s almost a statement rather than a question, and Sid jerks his head in affirmative.

“I called you first. You’re going to need to go after this one on your own.”

“We can handle it,” Spirit says over Stein’s shoulder. He must have collected himself; he sounds steady and professional, now. Even if it’s just a facade, it’s a decent one. “What happened?”

Sid drops his head back against the wall; he’s looking grey with pain or blood loss or both but steady enough. He’ll stay conscious until support arrives, at least. “It was the man from the collection you two went out on, the one who shot at you and then bolted. We were supposed to collect him from a distance, bring him in from there. He picked up a hostage somewhere, this little kid, had a knife up against the kid’s throat and a gun in his other hand.” He sighs. “We couldn’t get a clear line of sight on him. Justin was moving sideways to try to improve the aim and the guy took a shot at him. It missed but that set Giriko off; he just dropped his Dominator, went in for this guy, and then the kid went down and Medusa just started laughing.”

There’s a pause. Stein can feel Spirit’s impatience but there’s more, he can see it in the set of Inspector Barett’s jaw, so he waits while the other man steadies himself for whatever he doesn’t want to say.

“This is extremely classified,” he starts, voice so low Stein can barely hear him and Spirit has to lean in against the Enforcer’s back so he can catch the words. “But I’m not about to send you out without at least a warning. The Dominator might not work correctly.”

“ _What_?” Spirit says over Stein’s shoulder.

Sid grimaces. “It couldn’t lock on when I tried to take her down. It looked like her Coefficient was veering from high to low and back too fast for the scanner to get a read.” He clears his throat. “Like I said, I can’t get a response from Giriko either; he took off and Justin went after him, though I’m not sure what his plan is. I’m not sure what his Pass looks like but I don’t expect it’s good. They’re not your top priority right now. We don’t know what their status is and Medusa is definitely out of control. Focus on the known problem to start.”

“Understood.” Stein straightens his spine and waits for Spirit to collect himself.

“Okay,” the Inspector finally says. When Stein glances at him he looks pale and a little shaken but his voice and his hands are both steady, and that’s really all they need. “Let’s go.”

Stein takes the lead as an unspoken precaution, though it’s Spirit’s gestures or head tilts that direct him. The area is clear of bystanders, probably due to the precaution of the original task, and so quiet that Stein can hear the distant sound of the medical vehicle collecting Sid from where they left him. That’s one less thing for Spirit to worry about, at least, which just leaves the three other Enforcers that may or may not be in the vicinity.

Stein is running through possibilities in his head as they make their way through the darkened streets, the relative probability of Medusa running or staying; he hasn’t made a study of the blonde, but he has enough casual experience that he is fairly sure of the conclusion he comes to. As a result, it’s not an enormous surprise when her husky voice comes from a side street as they approach.

“Aww, the Dream Team came out to bring me in?” She steps forward into the light, not bothering with maintaining the minimal cover of the shadows. Her eyes are almost black in the shadows, her hair shimmering bronze-gold in the dim light. She’s smiling, too, her teeth catching the light so the lopsided slant of the expression is perfectly clear. “I’m flattered, boys, but I don’t think I can handle more than one of you at a time.”

Stein lifts his Dominator to train on the other Enforcer, not because he thinks he’ll be successful but just to confirm what Sid told him. The weapon clicks through the initial scan of his own data, confirms his use...and there’s a hiss of static, the voice starts to speak and cuts itself off. “Target is...Enforce-At-Will...Lethal…” The gun is flicking through states, adjusting and shifting too fast for Stein to react to, and the number on the scanner is shifting as he watches, jumping from the high 300s to 50 to 180.

“What the hell?” Spirit blurts. He’s got his weapon up too, gaze fixed on the blue haze of his screen.

“I’m complicated,” Medusa purrs. She’s moving forward, playing idly with the knife in her hand; Spirit is still staring at his Dominator but Stein lowers his currently-useless weapon, shifts his weight as the blonde comes forward. “Not all of us are as perfectly boringly  _healthy_  as you are,  _Spirit_.”

Stein steps sideways, away from Spirit to put him at arm’s length. Medusa tips her head at him, smiles in a way that says she understands, but she follows him instead of the Inspector and there is some relief in that.

“Like your pet Enforcer,” she goes on, turning sideways so Spirit can’t see the knife but Stein still can as she paces around him. “Used to be I could  _count_  on him to maintain his nice stable level of crazy, before you showed up. You’re having  _such_  a good influence on him.” She takes another step, so Stein is almost entirely between her and the Inspector. “Try scanning him. It’s not like that’ll work on me right now anyway.”

Stein’s watching Medusa, not Spirit, but he can tell the moment the other man’s weapon wavers in the tension that floods into Medusa’s body. He’s expecting it, at least, pivots sharp to face her and gets his Dominator up to catch the slash of the weapon in her hand; there’s a shout from behind him but he doesn’t turn, Medusa is demanding all his focus. He’s stronger and bigger than she is but she’s  _fast_ , whip-quick and lighter on her feet than should be possible, and she has a blade while he just has a makeshift shield. Then she comes back across with a backhand swing; Stein gets the gun up but the handle catches the blade oddly, sends it sliding down so the edge catches the hand he has gripping the trigger, and in the first instinctive jerk of pain the Dominator drops and Medusa kicks it away.

“Not like it would have done any good,” she grins, and then she leans back on one foot, brings her other up to launch a kick at Stein’s head. He can dodge that, at least, twists and ducks so it’s a glancing blow off his shoulder instead of his neck, but the practice he has had with hand-to-hand combat is always with the training bots, and it’s always just fists and feet, and the blonde has a knife.

He sees the edge at the last minute, jerks forward as the only way to avoid the blade slicing through an artery, and Medusa twists away, steps behind him while he’s almost-falling and grabs at his shoulder from behind, where he can’t get a good angle on her. The blade comes against his throat, cold and prickling with painful threat, and then Medusa jerks on his shoulder and spins them both around so Stein can see Spirit, his wide-eyed horror and the uncertain angle of the Dominator he’s still holding.

“Don’t move,” Medusa orders, and Stein isn’t sure if she’s talking to him or Spirit but they both obey. The blade’s too close; when he swallows there’s a trickle of blood from the motion, dripping down his throat and soaking into the collar of his shirt. Spirit isn’t blinking, isn’t speaking; his hands are shaking now, the Dominator is wobbling even as Stein watches, and the Inspector is staring at him like he’s waiting to wake up from a nightmare.

“Shoot,” Stein says, clear and steady. “She must be stabilized now,  _shoot_.”

Spirit’s hands steady, the Dominator comes up...and the Inspector’s face falls into panicked frustration. “I  _can’t_.”

“It’s fine, I’ll live, just shoot us both,” Stein demands, but the Inspector is shaking his head before he’s even done speaking.

“No, I  _can’t_ , it won’t  _fire_.”

Stein blinks, and really looks at the Dominator, just as Medusa starts to laugh over his shoulder. He can feel the amusement purring up into her throat, the hum of pleasure when she tips her head in and speaks in a faux-whisper against his ear.

“You’re  _sane_.”

The Dominator is red, locked-out the way it would be if Stein had it trained on Spirit himself, and Stein can’t see the numbers Spirit is seeing but when the Inspector meets his gaze his eyes are somewhere between shock and horror.

“He could fire on us both if you were yourself,” Medusa is saying, amusement still touching her voice although her hand on the knife is still perfectly solid. “Paralyze you, take me down with a Lethal Eliminator. He would too, wouldn’t he, fire on you for the sake of getting to me?” She laughs again. “But as long as he’s here you’re too sane for Sibyl to recognize you, and as long as I have you I’m perfectly safe.”

There’s a press of lips against Stein’s jaw, almost-a-kiss that he flinches from even with the knife at his neck. There’s another trickle of blood, another giggle from the woman at his back. “So how does it feel, Stein? Aren’t you glad he made you all better?”

Stein can’t look away from Spirit. The Inspector is still holding the locked-down Dominator up, still steady from the Enforcer’s original order, but his mouth is trembling and his eyes are liquid with the threat of tears visible even at this distance. Rationality is telling Stein they’re trapped, that Medusa is entirely right and he should give up. But there’s still that whisper at the back of his head, the voice insisting that they  _can’t_  lose, and Spirit’s eyes are almost drowning it out but he can still hear it.

Spirit opens his mouth to say something and Stein says, “Don’t move,” quick and sharp so it cuts off the Inspector’s voice before he even begins. Stein shuts his eyes, pushes away the faint sound of Spirit’s breathing, lets his focus narrow to just the feel of Medusa against his back, the hand pulling back on his shoulder and the edge of the knife at his throat. There’s just him, only him and the other Enforcer, all he needs to do is buy a minute, a second of hesitation. He’s not dead yet, there’s still possibility, there is  _always_  possibility, all he has to do is wait for it, wait for the chance to pull away, to grab the knife from her hand and turn it on her throat, wait for the moment when the body behind him gives way to the spray of pulse-hot liquid of the Eliminator.

Stein’s not thinking about Spirit. He’s not thinking about the situation, he’s barely thinking about the knife at his throat; he’s just  _waiting_ , letting the irrational mania of survival purr static-loud in the back of his head, suffuse his muscles with the calm relaxation of instant-response.

He hears the sound of the Dominator clicking into place from a long way away, as almost irrelevant to his current status. There’s a bubble of laughter from behind him, a choked inhale from in front of him, and then Medusa starts to really laugh, properly. She’s speaking: “What do you think, Inspector? Still like what you see?” but that’s not important. What is important is the slight relaxation in the arm against his shoulder, the almost imperceptible drift of the edge at his throat.

Stein opens his eyes. Spirit is staring at him, rather than at Medusa; his eyes are still damp but his mouth is set, now, fixed and determined, and Stein doesn’t have to nod to know the Inspector understands. Then Spirit blinks back at Medusa, and as his finger tightens on the trigger Stein moves, jerks himself sharply to the side as his brain determines  _painful but not lethal_  and the blade drops down, just a few inches, just enough that when the blonde twists her hand in reaction it digs into Stein’s shoulder instead of his throat. It’s Stein that moves, drops boneless against the bright flash of pain in his shoulder, and it’s the motion that drives the blade deeper and across his shoulder. But he’s out of the way, he’s cleared the shot, and Spirit doesn’t so much as whimper in protest before he squeezes the trigger as the Dominator clicks itself up into Lethal Eliminator. There’s a moment of breathless expectation -- then Medusa makes a sound that might be a scream and might be a laugh. It’s impossible to tell before it cuts off sharply along with the weight of a body behind him. There’s just the pain in his shoulder, and the air at his back, and the wet spray of past-tense life over him. Stein shuts his eyes, and takes a breath, and listens to the sound of Spirit’s Dominator, and then Spirit’s knees, hitting the ground.


	13. Empathy

There’s too much blood.

It’s everywhere Spirit looks, on his hands and coating the Enforcer lying across his lap; when he dials for help it takes three tries before the call will go through because he can’t see the screen for the color. There’s worse, too, bits of things he’s trying very hard not to think about, but at least there’s nothing he can do to make that better. Far more of a concern is the steady seep of blood from Stein’s shoulder, the flow that won’t stop no matter how hard Spirit wishes it would, no matter how hard he presses on the makeshirt bandage of his torn shirtsleeve.

“You shouldn’t have taken the knife out,” Stein says faintly. He’s still conscious, which is good, and he’s still talking to indicate that he is, which is better, but he’s utterly pale, so white the red smeared across his skin looks more real than he does. His eyes are still bright, though, for all that they’re not quite focusing correctly on Spirit’s face, and when he blinks up at the Inspector he smiles slightly, like he’s not thinking about it.

Spirit wishes that didn’t make him  _more_  concerned.

“I couldn’t just leave it until help came,” he protests. He’s trying to sound defensive, just for the borrowed backbone of the sound, but it comes out like a whimper instead, a plea for comfort that is the last thing Stein needs to deal with right now.

“You should have,”the Enforcer says. He blinks so slowly Spirit’s not sure for a minute he’s going to open his eyes after shutting them. “It wouldn’t be bleeding so much if you had left it.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll still be okay,” Spirit says to reassure himself as much as Stein. The Enforcer smiles again, blinks slow, and this time when Spirit keeps waiting he doesn’t open his eyes again.

“Stein.” He’s still breathing, Spirit can see that much, but it’s terrifying to see the white of his skin under that gruesome mask of red without the verification of even hazy green eyes watching him. “Stein,  _Stein_ , do  _not_  pass out on me.”

“Are you that worried?” the Enforcer says without opening his eyes.

“Of  _course_  I’m that worried,  _open your eyes_  Stein.”

The other man’s smile goes wider, until he’s almost laughing before he obeys and blinks his eyes open. He looks worse, he’s not tracking Spirit at all anymore, or at least not his face; his gaze is skimming around the periphery of his face, sweeping out the curving fall of his hair rather than the lines of his expression.

“Just stay awake,” Spirit says. He doesn’t even care how desperate he sounds now, Stein’s barely hearing him anyway. “Help’s on its way, just stay awake Stein, please please stay awake so I know you’re okay.”

“You have beautiful hair,” Stein says, murmuring like he’s talking to himself. One hand comes up as if to reach for the other before Spirit can catch the Enforcer’s wrist and force him back down and still.

“Yeah, you can tell me all about it,” he soothes. “I’ll be here the whole time, so don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Stein does laugh, then, faintly, and Spirit is so caught in watching the delirious pleasure in the other’s face that he almost doesn’t hear the sound of footsteps coming down the side street over his shoulder. But they’re getting louder, and they’re fast, almost a run, and some part of his brain has had too much training to ignore this even when Stein is on the verge of passing out from blood loss in his arms. Spirit reaches for the Dominator beside him, still watching Stein’s face, and then twists and brings the weapon up in one move. He can’t stand with Stein’s head in his lap so the angle is poor, but the oncomers stop dead as soon as he turns, and there’s a flood of momentary relief as he recognizes them.

“Justin. Giriko.” The Dominator is reciting back its usual speech; he can tune it out almost entirely, now. “I’m so glad to see you, are you two alright?”

Neither of them answer, and when Spirit really  _looks_  at them there’s something wrong. Justin is standing just in front of Giriko, rocking his weight back on his heels and throwing an arm out sideways like he’ll offer some protection to the other Enforcer; Giriko’s leaning forward, shoulders hunched like he’s thinking about just throwing himself at Spirit, and he’s got one hand fisted at the back of Justin’s shirt collar like he’s in the middle of bodily jerking the blond back.

“What --” Spirit starts, and then the Dominator completes its scan.

“Giriko,” the level voice declares. “Registered Enforcer. Crime Coefficient is over 300.” The gun clicks, pieces shifting into place like they were minutes ago for Medusa. “Lethal Eliminator Mode activated. Please aim carefully and eliminate the target.”

“Oh,” Spirit says. “Oh, fuck.”

Justin takes a half-step sideways, edges himself in front of the other Enforcer. The gun clicks back down to the more standard Paralyzer mode but it’s not much better; the number flashing into Spirit’s eyes is over 200, over 250, and Spirit doesn’t know what Justin’s Pass was this morning or has been recently but he  _knows_  it must have been rising over the last month, to be so high now.

“Fuck.” He blinks his focus away from the display and back to the other two Enforcers. Giriko is half-crouching in Justin’s shadow, baring his teeth in a snarl he probably doesn’t realize he’s making; Justin looks better, or at least more human, but for all that his blue eyes are liquid with tears his mouth is set in a line that speaks to absolute determination.

“If you shoot I’ll kill you,” he says levelly, and Spirit watches the numbers on the display edge up a few digits. “I will tear your throat out with my teeth if I can’t get a gun or a knife, I swear to you I will.”

“I could shoot you first,” Spirit points out, some recklessly honest part of himself providing the answer.

Giriko hisses and jerks at Justin’s shirt, pulls him off-balance for a moment. “Then  _I’ll_  kill you. Sure you can get two shots off in time?”

Spirit’s not sure, not enough, and he’s doubly unsure he can actually make himself pull the trigger, not with the way Justin is staring at him and given that he’s already coated in the blood of one of his teammates. He doesn’t lower the Dominator, though.

“What are you going to  _do_?” he asks, and it sounds like as much of a plea as a question.

Justin laughs, weak and shaky; Spirit can see the motion shudder through his shoulders although no amusement touches his eyes. “What were we ever going to do? I’ve been fucked for a while, now. Nothing I could do about it, even when I realized.”

Spirit’s hands are starting to shake. He licks his lips. He can still hear Stein breathing. “When did you realize?”

Justin’s eyes drop to Stein, just for a moment; then he looks back to Spirit, and there’s no question in his face, just serene calm. He looks faintly angelic, his golden hair catching the dim glow of the streetlights and his eyes otherworldly.

“I knew,” he says clearly. “While I was still an Inspector. I knew. I could tell.” His eyes drift to Stein again before he blinks back into focus. “Not all of us are so lucky as he is.”

Spirit swallows, glances at that display again -- 278 -- then deliberately takes a hand off the handle, reaches out to rest his hand against Stein’s blood-sticky hair without looking.

“You’d better go,” he says, glancing past Justin to include Giriko too. “Don’t want to run into an Inspector before you make it out of the city.”

Justin doesn’t thank him. Giriko doesn’t even look at him. The blond just reaches behind him to grab the hand Giriko is extending for him, turns away and draws the other man across the street and into the shadows of an alley. Giriko keeps his hold on the other’s shirt as far as Spirit can see, like he’s being led blind by that one point of contact.

“You’re too nice for your own good.”

Spirit looks down. Stein is watching him, still hazy but more or less in focus on his face. The Inspector forces a smile. “I thought you had passed out.”

“You told me not to,” Stein says as if it’s obvious. “So I didn’t.”

“Does that work?” Spirit asks as the sound of the medical transport starts to echo in the distance.

Stein smiles at him, reaches out without looking to wrap his fingers around the end of the Dominator Spirit is still holding and drag it towards himself. He keeps watching the Inspector’s face while the weapon glows blue into Spirit’s eyes, waits until Spirit’s blinked the 93 out of his sight and the gun has shut itself down. Then he lets go, drops his hand back over his stomach, and sighs, and Spirit doesn’t tell him to open his eyes this time when he shuts them.

“Did you get what you wanted?” he asks.

Stein tips his head in against Spirit’s leg, reaches out to rest his fingertips against the other’s hip as the transport glides to halt in front of them. “Yes.”


	14. Reflection

“Don’t you have anywhere better to be?”

Stein is teasing, mostly. It’s worth it for the look on Spirit’s face when he turns around, the first flash of hurt before he sees the Enforcer’s repressed smile and his expression drops into exasperation.

“Not that I can think of.” He comes back from the table to where Stein is sitting up against the head of the bed, tosses the fresh bandages alongside the Enforcer so he can settle himself against the other man’s side and reach for the gauze taped over the stitches in Stein’s shoulder. “I could really reflect on it, if you want, though. I’m pretty sure there’s a new girl at the front desk who could do with more attention than she’s been getting.”

“I’d hate to deprive her of your company,” Stein says as Spirit pulls the wrapping free far more gently than he would himself.

“True.” Spirit pretends to consider. “Seeing as I am a gift to the women of the world.”

“I was thinking more in terms of comedic relief, but whatever you say.”

Spirit hisses in mock-irritation and Stein laughs before he composes himself to stillness while Spirit’s fingers ghost over the healing wound in his shoulder. Spirit’s touch is warm on skin already flushed from injury, but he’s so gentle it barely hurts at all, especially given the counteracting effect Spirit’s touch always has of soothing Stein into relaxation.

“It looks better,” Spirit observes. Stein watches his face rather than trying to look down; the Inspector’s forehead is creased with concentration, he’s idly biting at his lower lip with focus, but he doesn’t look as close to tears as he did when doing this the first few days.

“It should,” Stein says without looking. “The swelling generally subsides by the third day and we’re on the fifth.”

Spirit laughs without looking up from the contact of his fingers on Stein’s shoulders. “Thanks, yeah, it’s a great comfort that you know that in such detail.”

“Here to help.”

Spirit rolls his eyes without properly looking up; when he reaches out to fumble for the fresh bandages Stein has anticipated it, is offering them so he doesn’t have to reach. That gets the other man to look at him, wins Stein a flash of an appreciative smile before Spirit leans in to focus on what he’s doing.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” the redhead orders.

“You’re not,” Stein says. The reassurance has become routine over the last few days, since the hospital declared that stitches in his shoulder weren’t worth keeping Stein in the infirmary and discharged him back to his room to finish recovering. “You’re more gentle about it than I would be.”

Spirit grins again, a flash of amusement that doesn’t pull him from his focus. “That’s just because you don’t prioritize your own comfort highly enough.”

Stein doesn’t protest that. It’s true, after all. “It isn’t possible to be more careful than you’re already being. Even if you were hurting me telling you would do no good.”

“I still want to know.”

“So you can offset it through sheer force of will?”

Spirit tosses his hair back with the headtilt of assumed arrogance he sometimes shows when he’s putting on a caricature of himself. “Don’t underestimate my abilities, Stein.” He sticks down the last edge of gauze with medical tape, lets his fingers trail sideways so he can rest his hand on the Enforcer’s uninjured shoulder and meet the other’s considering gaze. His smile is teasing but his eyes are soft, softer than they should be and definitely softer than Stein deserves. That’s okay. Stein’s rational enough to keep ‘should’ and ‘is’ separate, most of the time.

He tips his head back against the wall, blinks at the Inspector. “Spirit.”

“If you tell me to leave again, you should just accept that I’m going to ignore you.”

“No,” Stein says, slowly, like he’s thinking it over. “You might listen if I keep repeating myself and then I’d be in real trouble.” Spirit laughs and Stein smiles briefly before going on. “Why did you let Justin and Giriko go?”

The Inspector’s smile melts away like it was never there at all; Stein is sorry to see it go, sorry to be the cause, but he’s been waiting to ask and there doesn’t seem any point in waiting any longer. There’s been no word on the two missing Enforcers, and with the critical shortage of manpower in their department currently there’s not been anyone to go out after them. If another team has been sent out after them they haven’t found anything, or Stein hasn’t heard about it, and the same voice that told him he’d survive the confrontation with Medusa is telling him they’re free, for now, at least.

Spirit looks away, out at the bare wall alongside the door; Stein can see him swallow, see his mouth tighten in thought. “It was. It was an impulse.”

“You are impulsive,” Stein agrees. He’s not trying to make his voice any warmer than it usually is, but Spirit looks at him and smiles like he’s collecting some sort of comfort from the sound, and when he keeps speaking the words come more easily.

“I would have killed Giriko if I had shot him.” Spirit’s hand leaves Stein’s shoulder, comes up to drag through his hair as he looks back out to stare unseeing at the wall. “I didn’t want to kill him too.”

There’s a flash of chill that runs over Stein’s skin. He’s heard this sort of thing before, from past Inspectors that didn’t stay Inspectors for long. “You didn’t kill Medusa,” Stein points out. “The Dominator --”

“That I shot killed her,” Spirit says, but he sounds steady, remarkably calm, and when he glances back at Stein his eyes are clear. “I’m fine, don’t worry. She would have killed you, or me if things had gone differently.” His laugh doesn’t quite touch his eyes but it has the cold sincerity of dark humor. “It would have been much worse if it had been me instead of you, right?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah.” Spirit sighs, tips his head forward so his hair obscures his profile. “So. It’s fine, it happens, right? Part of the job, and all that. But Giriko wasn’t directly threatening either of us, and I -- I didn’t want to. It wasn’t...it wouldn’t have been right, to protect you and then turn around and shoot them down without even hesitating.”

“The System declared them unsafe for society,” Stein points out. His voice is level, as clear of condemnation or approval as his thoughts. He’s hardly in a position to make moral judgments, after all. “What are they going to do?”

Spirit’s head comes up so he’s gazing at the ceiling. “I don’t know. They can’t stay here, with the scanners looking for them, after all. Maybe they’ll leave the city, live away from the System and other people and civilization entirely. It’s better than dying, at least.” He takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out Stein can hear it shaking. “I just wanted to save as many people as I could.”

“You’re too nice,” Stein says in echo of his initial reaction.

Spirit looks at him sideways. “Do you think I was wrong?”

“I don’t think you were right or wrong.” Stein reaches out to close his fingers on Spirit’s wrist, just under the cuff of his shirt. “You shouldn’t be looking to me for absolution, if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Spirit lets himself down onto the bed until he can rest his head against Stein’s uninjured shoulder. “What  _should_  I look to you for?”

Stein laughs, lets Spirit’s wrist go so he can trace his fingers along the back of the other’s neck, dip down just under the collar of his shirt. “That’s a loaded question.”

“Mm.” Spirit shifts, presses a kiss against Stein’s skin. “It is.”

“Don’t you have anywhere better to be?” Stein asks again, amusement and affection both bleeding warmth into his tone.

Spirit shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

The redhead can’t possibly see Stein’s smile, but the Enforcer can feel his expression echoed on the Inspector’s lips on his skin, and that’s enough.


	15. Time

It’s surreal to watch the sun rise. Giriko isn’t in the habit of waking up this early in the morning, or wasn’t, but even on the rare occasions when he was up too late or hungover too early he was in his windowless room at the Department, separated from the air and the sunlight as much as from the society of  _healthy_  people.

That word has been a curse for a long, long time, ever since he screwed up badly enough to get caught on a scanner and got brought in as a latent criminal. He doesn’t know how long it’s been -- time had as little meaning in the city as sunshine did -- but it’s been long enough that the lack of fire in his blood at the adjective now is odd, like missing a step he expects at the top of a flight of stairs. He’s not used to it even now, and it’s been days since they cleared the last edge of the city scanners, since his more recent conception of time in the steady rise of Justin’s Coefficient stopped having any value anymore.

“Giriko?”

Justin is awake. Giriko doesn’t turn around, doesn’t need to reassure himself that Justin is there like he used to. He stays where he is, facing into the warmth of the sunshine as it washes over his face.

“You don’t have to get up,” he growls. The roughness in his voice is separate from the effects of the city, tied in to his personality, and he’s not planning on changing that for anyone. “You could do with more sleep, you look like you’re on the verge of collapse.”

“Shut up,” Justin grumbles. He aims a kick at Giriko’s hip and the other man lets him take it without catching his ankle to hold off the impact. “How’s that withdrawal going for you?”

“Better.” It  _is_  better. The shakes have stopped, the crippling headaches have faded off; Giriko wouldn’t say no to a shot or a beer if someone offered it to him, but he no longer feels like he’s not going to be human without it. He does glance back, then; Justin is sitting up, looking bleary and exhausted, but the sunlight is catching the gold in his hair and turning it into a halo. “How’s being on the run going for you?”

“Hungry,” Justin says. “Cold. Dirtier than I’d like to be.”

Giriko turns back around. “That’s what you get for falling in with unsavory characters.”

“Don’t be idiotic.” Justin comes forward to sit next to Giriko, punches him in the leg right where he landed his original kick. Giriko hisses at the pain, elbows Justin back so the other whines in protest. He doesn’t move away, though, just settles himself close enough that their knees are touching. “As if I’d be anywhere else.”

“You could be,” Giriko says to the sun. “You had a choice.”

“I wish you would let that go.” Justin’s voice has taken on the edge he always does, on this subject.

“Add it to the list of things that you would change if you could,” Giriko says. He kind of wants to pick this fight but he can’t muster the energy; leaving the city has sapped him of the bleeding edge of rage that has driven him in the past. It’s just familiar, the needling back and forth, falling back on old banter more from habit than desire. When Justin laughs, Giriko shuts his eyes, drinks in the manic shiver under the sound with the comfort of pressing on a bruise.

“Yes,” Justin says. He shifts, gets to his feet so Giriko has to tip his head up to look at him. “If I could remake the world according to my will, only imagine how smoothly everything would function.” He lifts one hand towards the light; gold gathers on his skin, fades the accumulated dirt and exhaustion into invisibility, and for a minute he looks like he’s the source of all the light in the world, the sun god of mythology turned real. Then he blinks, and drops his hand, looks down at Giriko, and he’s just himself, bruised and tired and smiling, faintly vicious like a half-feral cat.

Giriko grins back. He knows about being feral, after all. “You’d demand perfect obedience,” he suggests.

“No. Just devotion.” Justin’s eyes shift out of focus, Giriko can see the megalomania settling into his imagination. Then he blinks, and sighs, drops back to sit next to Giriko. “I guess I’ll have to make do with just you.”

“I’m not devoted to you,” Giriko growls. Justin glances at him, raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything explicitly so Giriko can pretend he’s won that battle.

“It’s okay,” the blond goes on. “You’re the only thing that really matters anyway.”

That sends a shiver through Giriko, the memory of the fear that comment deserved when Coefficients mattered and the real-time flush of selfish pleasure it has always brought with it too.

“Yeah,” he agrees. It’s pointless to deny it, when everything Justin has done since they met proves the sincerity of his words, and Giriko’s not about to argue about the difference between what the blond  _should_  think and what he  _does_.

There’s a pause, silence more companionable than they’ve ever managed before. Even at its best there was always the threat of the future looming over them, the timer Giriko could see in Justin’s eyes and the constant danger of tomorrow for him, whether the number under his skin would finally topple over the edge and get him killed. But now he can breathe, can let the shiver of barely-restrained violence warm his blood without the associated complications, can appreciate the way Justin’s eyes sometimes look when he slides out-of-focus instead of tensing in expectation of what that  _means_. He can just  _have_ , have Justin as he is and his thoughts as they are without the spectre of judgment weighing him down.

With that lightness, it’s easy to lift his arm, to let it land around Justin’s shoulders and pull the blond in against his shoulder. Justin’s smile comes easy, too, as the other tips his head in towards Giriko’s chest in unabashed affection and Giriko angles his chin down to press his mouth to the tangle of the other’s hair. The sun edges entirely  over the horizon, Justin shuts his eyes and smiles into the warmth, and Giriko watches the blond’s face and lets time go entirely.


	16. Agreement

“It’s not fair,” Spirit announces as Stein holds the door to his room open for the Inspector. “I’m glad they moved you, sure, but why couldn’t you move out of the Department and in with me?” He lets his jacket slide off as he steps through the doorway, tosses it over the back of the chair set at the cluttered desk. “It’s not like your Coefficient is even all that high.”

“Anymore,” Stein points out. He’s followed the Inspector into the room, is standing by the door while he slides his shoes off. “A few months of a lowered Pass under the right circumstances isn’t going to offset years of a stable value, you know that. And you can’t be around all the time.”

“Can’t I?” Spirit teases, but he’s not really all that irritated. Stein’s new room is bigger, warmer with the addition of a couch and a few of Spirit’s possessions until it looks more like a small apartment than a cell. That helps offset the actual fact of the security around it, that and the way Stein’s eyes go soft when he watches Spirit help himself to the space.

“You’ve been doing impressively well,” Stein admits.

“Who knows what trouble you’d get up to on your own,” Spirit says as his tie comes free to join an open book and a half-full glass of water on the table. When he turns back around Stein is still at the door, leaning back with his hands in his pockets and looking like he’d be content to stay there and watch Spirit all day.

Spirit raises an eyebrow, toes his shoes off and moves towards the bed. “You going to just stand there or come over and join me?”

“It is a nice view,” Stein says, but he comes forward, pads across the floor and joins Spirit on the mattress as the Inspector pulls the edge of his shirt free from his slacks. They pause for a moment, Stein bracing himself on the bed and leaning in so Spirit tips his head in expectation of a kiss that the Enforcer hesitates to provide. Then Spirit huffs, crosses the distance himself, and Stein smiles against his mouth and reaches up to work his buttons open.

“Maybe someday you can move in with me,” Spirit says when Stein stops kissing his mouth in favor of moving down to his collarbone as he slides the Inspector’s shirt off. Spirit follows his lead, catches at the edge of the other’s soft sweater so he can push it up over Stein’s head. “You could have a commute longer than an elevator ride.”

“Mmm.” Stein drops Spirit’s shirt off the edge of the bed, pushes the redhead back to the bed and lets his hands slide down to the top of the other’s slacks. “Sounds exhausting. Inconvenient, honestly.”

“It is, a bit,” Spirit admits. “But you’d have me there with you.”

“You assume I have much of choice in my living situation,” Stein points out. Spirit lifts his hips to let the Enforcer slide his clothes free before he sits up, reaches out to hook his fingers around the top edge of Stein’s dark jeans. “And that I don’t have you here with me now.”

“Maybe I’m a hallucination,” Spirit suggests. “You’ve gone off the deep end and I’m just a figment of your imagination.”

“Maybe.” Stein shifts, reaches to catch the edge of his jeans to help Spirit work them off his hips. “I didn’t think my imagination was so inventive, honestly.”

“Not worried about it?” Spirit asks. Stein tips over onto his back, smiles up at the Inspector. Spirit can see the relaxation in his limbs, the comfort visible in every line of his body as much as in the softness of his eyes behind his glasses.

Stein shrugs. “Not particularly.” Spirit leans down, kisses the fresh scar against his shoulder while the Enforcer goes on speaking. “If this is what my imagination is going to come up with, I’m not interested in stopping it.”

“Oh good,” Spirit smiles. There’s a whole trail of scars across Stein’s chest; he kisses his way down along them, over the Enforcer’s chest to his stomach and across his hip. The relaxation is starting to go, wind into the tension of expectant adrenaline as Spirit’s mouth comes lower, but when Stein’s hands brush over the Inspector’s hair they’re gentle as if he’s perfectly calm.

“There’s no word on Justin and Giriko,” Stein says, sounding remarkably steady in spite of the tremble under his skin.

“It’s been weeks,” Spirit observes without lifting his head. “Think they’ll be found?”

“Prob--” Stein starts, but the words stop dead in his throat as Spirit moves his head. “ _Ah_. Probably not, no.” His hands are tensing against Spirit’s hair now, his fingers curling into gentle fists on the strands. “If they’re still gone they -- they won’t be found.”

Spirit comes up for a moment. “You’re very certain of that.”

“I thought about escaping before,” Stein says. “Purely academically, of course.” He angles his hips up to meet Spirit’s mouth, pauses in his speech to take a sharp breath of reaction. “And it’s needless, now. I didn’t have a reason to leave before but --” Another breath, harder, sharp enough that it is nearly a gasp. “But now I have a reason to stay.”

“Mm,” Spirit hums, lifts his head so he can look up through his hair at Stein. The Enforcer is looking down at him, gaze lingering against Spirit’s hair before his eyes catch Spirit’s and he smiles. “Go on, you know how I love it when you talk about me.”

Stein laughs, lets his fingers stroke gentle through Spirit’s hair while the Inspector goes back to distracting him. “I have this supervisor, of sorts, but he’s a new recruit. Lots -- lots of raw talent, but can’t be trusted on his own.” Spirit laughs without pulling away and Stein gasps in reaction, has to pause to collect himself before he goes on. “Needs looking after.” The hand in Spirit’s hair slides down over his shoulder, curls gentle against the back of his neck. “So do I, though.” His breathing is starting to go ragged, catch in the back of his throat as his body draws tight with tension. “We’re a -- a good team.”

Stein takes a deep breath, lets his hold on Spirit’s hair go gentle, and when he speaks again his coherency is lost. “ _Spirit_ , you --” Spirit hums in response, slides his tongue, and the fist comes back, Stein rocks up off the mattress and groans wordless as the tension in his body thrums into pleasure for a few breathless seconds.

Spirit pulls back, comes up over the Enforcer to kiss his shoulder again before he lets himself fall back to the mattress. “Your supervisor, huh?”

Stein tips his head to watch the Inspector, grins slow and satisfied before he rolls onto his side and lets his fingers trace down along Spirit’s hip. “You  _are_ , technically.”

“You make it sound like I’m keeping you as some kind of pet,” Spirit protests, through the words veer high and a little breathless as Stein’s fingers tighten around him and the Enforcer coms up on an elbow so he’s looking down at the redhead.

“I don’t mind the comparison,” he observes. “Do you?”

“I’m hardly your supervisor,” Spirit insists stubbornly. “I follow your instructions more often than not.”

“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t obey you if you gave them to me instead,” Stein says evenly. “Look at us now.”

“What?” Spirit’s not following the conversation, although that may have more to do with what Stein’s doing with his fingers than the actual intelligibility of the words.

“I didn’t want to drag you down with me,” Stein says. “And yet here you are.”

“You’ve hardly dragged me anywhere,” Spirit protests. “I -- came willingly, for one thing. For another I -- I’m a good influence on you.”

“Are you.” Stein is grinning, watching Spirit’s face so closely the Inspector would be embarrassed if he weren’t so flushed with the rising wave of pleasure. “This looks an awful lot like corruption to me.”

Spirit manages a smile of his own, a choked laugh as he reaches out to steady himself against Stein’s hip. “I started this, thanks. Give me some credit here, Stein.”

“Oh, so you’re taking advantage of the defenseless Enforcer, is that it?” Stein is still smiling, leaning in so his lips brush tantalizingly over Spirit’s. “How dreadful of you.”

“Yeah, I -- I couldn’t help myself.” When Spirit leans in for more Stein tips back, just out of reach. “He was such a tease, you know, I just -- oh god, Stein, just -- I just couldn’t resist, you know.” His hand on Stein’s hip is starting to shake. “Don’t stop, Stein,  _please_.”

Stein smiles, says, “Okay,” and doesn’t. It’s not until the wave of pleasure is inevitable, rushing in the wake of the flush of heat under Spirit’s skin, that he realizes Stein’s obeying his orders exactly as promised, and he starts to laugh just before the shudder of pleasure cuts the sound off into a moan instead.

Stein is still watching him when Spirit recollects his temporarily lost composure, eyes still soft with that considering affection he shows more often than not, now.

“You’re amazing,” he says, tone as flat as if he’s saying something patently true instead of offering one of his rare moments of true sincerity. Spirit doesn’t call him out on it, just smiles and reaches up to ruffle his fingers through silver hair.

“So are you,” he returns with all the warmth in his voice that Stein’s is missing. The Enforcer’s smile is soft, gains heat as Spirit watches, and when he leans down to kiss the Inspector his lips are warm on Spirit’s.


End file.
